On May 20, 2014, the local dump in the Arctic community of Iqaluit—Canada’s northernmost and smallest capital city (population: seven thousand), located in Nunavut territory—spontaneously caught fire for the fourth time in less than a year.¹ In Canada, as elsewhere, landfill fires are a relatively common occurrence—the by-product of metabolically active waste materials and chemical oxidation.² However, unlike most major Canadian and American urban centers, which contain sophisticated technology for the detection, suppression, and disguising of landfill fires, Nunavut dump sites lack this infrastructure. Additionally, because Iqaluit is only accessible by airplane (and sealift during the summer),