Helotes, TX is now world famous!!

[hotwine]

Yeah, it's a major pain to locals. Has been burning since Christmas night and is expected to continue for weeks, maybe up to a year. Formed as alternate layers of mulch and dirt, it was some 80 ft high and 440 ft long when ignited by an arsonist. Local, county and state officials are doing the usual concentric finger-pointing ritual as to who should take charge of solving the problem. Cost estimates are in the $1.2-$1.7 mil range and will undoubtedly be borne by taxpayers. The landowner is said to have an EPA permit for a mulch pile, but at only 1/3 the quantity that's actually there.

We're about a mile due north of it and when the wind is out of the south, it blows the smell directly into our garage (when left open). Two schools with combined enrollment of some 5000 kiddos (mostly high schoolers) are within about 1500 ft of it, and some kids (esp. asthmatics) are having to stay home. The elderly are being advised to stay indoors as much as possible.

There's a real traffic jam of newshound choppers overhead between 5-6:30 each evening as all the newsies try to get updated video of the pile (which, like Buckster, doesn't move - it just squats there and fumes). Has become a regular feature of the local Infobabes and Reporterettes (to use Rush's terms).

More info and probably lots of photos are available at local TV stations' Websites (WOAI, KSAT, KENS) and our only newspaper at mysa.com.