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Firefighters extinguished a blaze in electronic waste stored at the Rogue Disposal & Recycling Transfer Station today, stopping the spread of the fire to other flammable material like cardboard and motor oil at the site, as well as a nearby field of dry grass. When firefighters arrived at the early afternoon fire west of White City, computers, televisions and other electronics were on fire and flames were charring a new metal building constructed to house the e-waste, said Jackson County Fire District 3 Battalion Chief Jeff Bancroft. Firefighters put out the fire in about 10 minutes, he said. Bancroft said the e-waste itself may have been the cause of the blaze. Just as kids experiment with a magnifying lens to burn paper, the electronics may have focused the sun’s rays. “So our best guess is that the sun had something to do with it,” he said. “It is right directly in the sunlight and with e-waste you have broken glass and different things that possibly could have refracted the sunlight and caused an ignition source. So that’s our guess right now. We’re going to do a little bit further investigation but I don’t think we’re going to come up with anything else.” Bancroft said he doesn’t know the extent of the financial damage suffered by Rogue Disposal & Recycling. “As far as the materials that burned up, it’s just garbage. It’s e-waste that people bring in and they have no place else to put it. Nobody’s recycling this stuff so it’s a matter of them having to store it out here,” he said. The transfer station takes in a variety of recyclables, although some have become hard to dispose of due to a collapse in the market for many types of recyclable materials. Mike Jacobson, commercial operations manager for Rogue Disposal, was at the scene of the fire. He said he doesn’t know yet the amount of the financial loss. He said the fire may change how Rogue Disposal stores electronic waste at the transfer station. “We’re going to look at what the cause of this was and we’ll take action to prevent this going forward,” Jacobson said. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @VickieAldous.