INUVIK - After eight hours and with 17 firefighters and three water tankers, the Inuvik fire department extinguished a blaze at the dump allegedly sparked with one discarded cigarette butt.

The fire started in the northwest corner of the town dump last Friday around 2:30 p.m. and burned until 10:30 p.m. while firefighters worked for hours burying the flames in mud and dousing them with water. Witnesses said they saw a salvager flick away a cigarette in the area before the fire started. Smoking is prohibited in the dump.

A fire allegedly started by a discarded cigarette butt burned for eight hours at the town dump Friday. - Katie May/NNSL photo

Victor Ciboci, an employee at the dump for two years, called the fire department when he saw thick plumes of smoke rising from a pile of garbage. He grabbed his fire extinguisher from his truck and started towards it, but that's when he saw the flames.

"I took the fire extinguisher but the flame was too big. I couldn't do nothing," he said. "It couldn't start by itself."

Fire Chief Al German said the fire started burning underground but was contained to one cell, which held household garbage. He said they're lucky the fire didn't spread to a nearby cell containing wood from the recently demolished Aurora College building.

"The fire never got anywhere near that, thank goodness, and we're grateful because that would've been a really big, roaring hot fire," German said.

"According to our water guy at the water tower, he said we dropped the lake four inches, so we must have used a lot of water."

Officials from Environment and Natural Resources were on site to help fight the fire, and it will be up to the department to charge the person responsible.

This fire was small compared to one that ravaged the dump in December 2005, burning up to 25 feet underground for more than a week.