It might not quite be the apocalypse–but in the movies that's how it starts: smog drifts over the city.It tastes acrid and unfamiliar. The smell is nasty. It fills your nose and mouth. It makes you uncomfortable. Your eyes start to get irritated. If you're indoors, you close the windows and turn on the fan. If you're outdoors, your mind turns to wanting to get indoors immediately. You look up again.
The smog is thicker, denser now. The sun has become a bright moon behind an intense smokescreen. From Newtown and the Queen's Park Savannah, you no longer see the skyline of either downtown Port-of-Spain or the Laventille hillside. The smog has become a rolling cloud. It rolls in and covers everything.Now this description might seem a little bit over the top. Yet for many in Port-of-Spain it is the exact situation that occurred this week.
Wake-up call
It is a wake-up call. What was once seen maybe as a "risk"–something with the potential to become a problem–is now a problem. Problems are distinct from risks because they are already damaging us. The La Basse is a problem growing by a 2011 estimate of 840 tons of rubbish a day. That's 1,100 trucks per day!Maybe someone might offer a counterargument that it isn't the La Basse that is the problem, but rather a certain type of person who sets fires in a garbage dump who is the problem.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members