The Durham Fire Department has taken command at the scene of the fire-control effort, and the plan is to keep contractors and city workers on the job seven days a week until the blaze is out, City Manager Patrick Baker and Deputy Fire Chief Barry Yeargan told the City Council Thursday.

The Parkwood Volunteer Fire Department is helping out by providing a tanker truck, and county emergency managers are keeping track of what's going on, Yeargan said, adding that the pace of the firefighting effort is now driven by how fast contractors can remove debris from the burning waste pile.

"We're all willing to do what we need to do to keep up with the contractor," Yeargan said.

The city is also talking with a Virginia firm, Pyrocool Technologies, that claims it has a product that can choke off the fire six to eight hours after it's applied, Baker said. Fire Chief Bruce Pagan is checking the firm's references, and officials were planning on meeting with the firm's representatives late Thursday or this morning.

"We're trying to determine if [the six- to eight-hour claim is] boastful, or if that is a useful product," Baker said, adding that the city's well-publicized problems at the dump have attracted several solicitations from firms that specialize in putting out yard-waste fires.

Baker and Yeagan said the Fire Department has also posted a safety officer at the site to help control the traffic that's occurring there.

Meanwhile, Solid Waste Management Director Donald Long said he believes the effort to put out the fire will ultimately cost his department $80,000, and that the department likely will be able to absorb the bill without requiring more money from the council.

The city could get a break because a private dump close by has gotten back in the good graces of state regulators, so it might not have to pay as much to haul the debris away, Long said.

Council members said they're worried the city may face financial claims from neighbors of the facility, at least a few of whom have sought shelter elsewhere until the fire is out. Baker responded that the city has insurance to cover that possibility. The discussion then turned to the dump's lapsed state license, which expired more than two years ago.

Long said the city's new attempt to renew the license is paying off, as state regulators are now willing to give it a temporary license once they receive an operations plan that would govern operations at the facility until December.

That also will cut down on hauling expenses. "We're now able to hold debris rather than shipping it out, which we were mandated to do," Long said. Baker explained later that the city will still have to grind up and haul off the debris that's burned, plus some that hasn't burned. But the state appears likely to allow it to keep a good bit of the unburned material on the site, which will allow city officials "to get rid of it on our own schedule," giving away some to residents and selling the rest.

Officials have scheduled public mulch giveaways on three consecutive Saturdays starting Sept. 30 and continuing Oct. 7 and Oct. 14. The giveaways will start at 7:30 a.m. and run until noon, if supplies last that long.

City Council members made it clear that while putting out the fire is the top priority, they still want an explanation why the dump's license was allowed to lapse, why the city's renewal efforts lagged so badly and why they and Baker didn't know about the problem.

"We want to know who knew what [and] when, what they did with that information and how far up the chain was that information shared, and what was the response," Mayor Bill Bell said. "That's the kind of information I want as mayor and I think the council wants."

Baker has said the only notice he saw from the state came in last week after the fire broke out. But documents on file with the city and the state show that he should have gotten copies of state compliance audits from June on that highlighted trouble at the facility.

Standard practice in the city manager's office would call for such reports to be given to the relevant deputy city manager, in this case Ted Voorhees, who in turn would forward them to the department involved, Baker said in an e-mail to the council.

Baker said he didn't see a June audit report that was copied to him, and doesn't believe the state copied subsequent reports to him before the fire. He added that he's asked his staff to find out whether the compliance audits were received by his office and, if so, what was done with them.

Members also said the city needed improve communications with neighbors. Long told them workers had finished going door-to-door in the affected neighborhoods, and that in the future he wants to bring residents "in on the front end, and let them know what the plan is."

Baker added that he wants to resurrect an idea floated during this spring budget review to create a "reverse 911 system" that would allow officials to broadcast recorded messages as needed to phones across the city or in specific neighborhoods.