FERNDALE, Wash. -- Talk about fighting fire with fire.

Crews fighting a smoky, stinky blaze in the dried crust of a
3-acre manure lagoon on a dairy farm have smothered the flames
with a blanket of wet cow poop.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, said Assistant
Fire Chief Larry Hoffman with Whatcom County Fire District No. 7.

Hoffman received an earful of complaints about the smoke and odor
as the fire burned for four days on the farm outside Ferndale,
about 100 miles north of Seattle.

"We're not the most popular department in town," he said Wednesday.
""It's offensive, the smell is. It stinks."

How bad?

"In your worst nightmare, if you can imagine burning manure
combined with a brush fire - this sort of woody undertone."

The fire "changes the smell of the manure, intensifies it."

After working with water and foam, crews on Tuesday began
spraying the wet manure, which squelched flames on the leading
edge of the fire.

On Wednesday, a giant pump applied another layer of wet manure -
and that seemed to do the trick.

"It's out!" Hoffman said Wednesday evening, "At least about 98-99
percent out. There's some small pockets burning in the crust, but
nothing that's going to affect anything."

Hoffman declared himself "extremely, extremely pleased," adding,
"Hopefully residents of the area will be pleased, too."

As many as 18 firefighters at a time worked on the blaze. A fire
break had been dug around the pond, so the flames couldn't leap
elsewhere on the 1,200-acre, 700-head dairy farm, Hoffman said.

He declined to identify the owners but said they had been
"extremely cooperative."

The cause of the fire was not known. It started Sunday in brush
growing on the dry 3- to 14-foot crust of manure, wood chips and
barn shavings on the surface of the 24-foot-deep lagoon.

"We're investigating the possibility it could be spontaneous
combustion from composting," Hoffman said, describing the lagoon
as "basically a big compost pile."

Most complaints to the Mount Vernon-based Northwest Air Pollution
Authority, which monitors pollution concerns in Skagit and Whatcom
counties, were about the smoke, staff engineer Annie Naismith said.

The authority received 18 complaints, mostly from Ferndale.

Though some people complained about respiratory problems, most of
the complaints were about the smoke during weather that was "too
hot to keep doors and windows closed," Naismith said.

It was hazardous work for fire crews.

"Our hoses only go so far. We can't go out on it," Hoffman said
earlier. "Below the crust of varying depths, it's like quicksand.
If they went down we'd never find them."

"I've been doing this for 20 years and never dealt with anything
like this," he said.

... Firemen are proud of their hoses.