Headaches. Coughing. Red eyes. Breathing problems. Air purifiers running around the clock, and the smell that just won’t go away.

For 53 days and counting, these things have been reality for hundreds Alabama residents living near an underground fire at a landfill just north of Birmingham, with no end in sight.

Some living closest to the fire have moved away from the blaze. Others have bought one or more air purifiers and sealed their homes off from the outside air as much as possible.

Jennifer Lewis moved into a home on Blackjack Road last February with her husband Michael – a firefighter with Birmingham Fire and Rescue — and their four children. They’d bought 11 acres and built their dream home on top of the hill in rural St. Clair County.

Now, Lewis says that dream has turned into a nightmare.

“Every single person in my house has health issues from this,” she said. “Cough, runny nose. We’ve had nosebleeds, sore throats, burning throat, headaches.

“I’ve had a headache every single day since this has started. Every single day around lunchtime, my headache starts. I could set a clock by it.”

The landfill fire was first reported on Nov. 25 in unincorporated St. Clair County, between the Birmingham suburbs of Moody and Trussville. The fire is burning mostly underground at a dump operated by Environmental Landfill, Inc.

Legally, the landfill was only supposed to take green waste, such as fallen trees, brush, leaves or vegetative material, and they did take a lot of that. The area that’s burning is estimated to be 100 feet deep in places.

But residents and inspectors from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management have documented unauthorized waste including tires, appliances and construction material, leaving many residents to wonder exactly what is burning in the underground inferno.

ADEM has pledged to investigate whether illegal dumping occurred at the site once the fire is put out, and St. Clair County officials declared a “state of emergency” and say the area will likely become a crime scene. But for now, answers have been hard to come by for those living closest to the fire.

The Lewis home is less than two miles from the fire. Some live even closer.

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Birmingham-area landfill fire still burns after 6 weeks

“I smell like smoke”

On the other side of the landfill, about a mile away from the blaze, Margarette Armstrong lives with her granddaughter Brice in a one-story house built in 1930, before most everything else in the area. She’s retired now, and spends most of her time inside the house.

“The first day and for a few days afterword I had ashes all over my truck and everything else,” Margarette Armstrong said.

Her granddaughter Brice, 24, is a singer and worries how the smoke will impact her voice. She also worries about the health impacts to her grandmother and other older residents in the area.

“The smell has been really bad,” Brice said. “People comment on how I smell like smoke, thinking I’m smoking cigarettes and stuff.

“The smell follows me wherever I go.”

Their house smells constantly of smoke, and Margarette worries that her furniture will always have that smell, especially her new couch.

“I’m worried about everything in the house as far as the furniture, that smoke smell is in the furniture,” Margarette said. “It gets in your clothes. You go places and people tell you that you smell like smoke.”

Smoke can be harmful to humans and couches, no matter what’s burning, especially prolonged exposure. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that particulate matter from smoke can cause irritation of the eyes, nose and throat; coughing; phlegm; chest tightness and shortness of breath.

Those symptoms can be worse among people with underlying health conditions, particular lung disease or heart disease, and older people and young children may be particularly vulnerable.

Off the chart

Most air quality monitors measure particulate matter in the air, or how many tiny particles are floating around that could get caught in your lungs.

On the color-coded scale, readings from 0-50 are green, considered satisfactory, posing little to no risk. Readings from 51-100 are in the yellow moderate range where sensitive groups may be affected. 151-200 is colored red for unhealthy, where members of the general public may be affected.

Readings between 201-300 are considered purple or very unhealthy, with increased risk for everyone. Above 301 is the maroon, or hazardous category, where “everyone is more likely to be affected.”

Technically, the U.S. Air Quality Index goes up to 500. Air quality readings above 500 are sometimes referred to as “beyond the AQI,” and the agency says that air pollution is hazardous at these levels, and that “Everyone should take steps to reduce their exposure when particle pollution levels are in this range.”

Readings at air quality monitors installed near the fire fluctuate widely based on the weather conditions and where the smoke is going, but there have been numerous maroon readings in the area, and several above 500 on the AQI scale

Birmingham-based air quality group GASP has installed basic air quality monitors around the fire at private residences in the area, including the Lewis home. More sophisticated air monitors were installed by the EPA at the landfill site last week, but the data from those monitors has to be analyzed at a lab and is not yet available.

For some, the smoke is simply too much.

100 yards away

The Rev. Richard Harp and his family live in one of the houses closest to the underground blaze. You can see his roof in a lot of the drone footage of the fire.

Harp is now a minister at the Deerfoot Church of Christ, but was a firefighter for three years before that. He estimates his backyard is about 100 yards away from the fire break, where fire fighters cleared the land to keep the fire from spreading.

He said he decided to move out of that house after a doctor diagnosed him with smoke inhalation out of concern for his family.

“My boys, they’ve been coughing and I feel horrible as a parent, but what do you do?” Harp said. “We’ve done all we can, we barricaded them in their room at night and they sleep with an air purifier on.

“We’ve done all we can, but we got to a point we just couldn’t stay.”

They’ve relocated to an Airbnb for the month of January at their own expense. He’s not sure what they’ll do after that.

“We’ve got the rest of the month of January covered, but I used my credit card,” Harp said. “When do you budget for this?”

Sealing off the windows

Robin Andrews lives a little farther away in the Carrington Lakes neighborhood. She and her husband are both retired now and spent a lot of time at the house. They’re getting by with a combination of home air purifiers and using painters’ tape to seal off their windows and all but one of the doors to their house.

“We’ve tried to figure it out, and it’s taken a while to figure out what to do,” she said.

There were times when Andrews said she had to cover her face to go to sleep. She worries about the impacts on her health and her grandchildren who come to visit from time to time.

And sometimes, they just have to get out.

“I was thinking about that today,” she said. “I thought, well, you know, maybe we could think of something we need at Costco today, and go down to Hoover.”

The large Shark brand air purifier they bought for the main living area gives an air quality readout, and Andrews said taping off the doors and windows helped finally get the machine to reach 100% air quality.

A private Facebook group for residents impacted by the fire has sprung up and now has more than 4,400 members. Not all of them live in the immediate vicinity of the landfill, but many do.

The group has proved to be a valuable resource for people trying to cope with the fire. Users have been sharing tips and information about the best home air purifiers, the latest air quality readings, and the latest updates from media and local government officials.

There’s even a couple sets of parody song lyrics about the fire. One is to the Bob Seger song “You’ll Accompany Me,” alluding to the smoke, and another turns the Eagles’ classic into “Hotel Can’t-Afford-Ya.”

Andrews posted photos of the readouts in the group after sealing the doors and encouraged others to do the same.

“I don’t normally post things on there, I try not to,” Andrews said. “But I posted about the taping of windows because I thought if somebody can’t afford an air purifier, maybe they can afford a roll of painters tape.”

Who will fix it?

Unfortunately, the residents who are coping with the fire will have to do so for a while longer at least.

St. Clair County has received multiple bids from contractors who specialize in these types of fires to put out the blaze. They’re expected to deliver a set of recommendations to the governor laying out a few potential options.

Most of the bids the county has received estimate that it will take about 30 days to get the fire and the smoke under control, most likely by using a fire-fighting foam and digging out some of the burning hotspots under the ground.

Until then, the smoke will likely continue to billow out through St. Clair and Jefferson Counties.

“It’s very frustrating to know that me and my family are breathing these things in every single day,” Lewis said. “And we don’t know what that means down the road. We don’t know what kind of toxic things we’re breathing in. And in 20 years, when my daughter’s 28, what is going to happen to her? Is she going to have effects on her health from this?

“It’s just very frustrating. I’m a mama bear, so when things start affecting my family and my children and their health, you know I want to speak out.”