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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Smoke still but Beetham fires under control

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20140128

The ma­jor­i­ty of the 12 fires in the Beetham dump that en­veloped sur­round­ing ar­eas in pun­gent smoke, pos­ing a tox­ic threat, have been ex­tin­guished.The smoke in down­town Port-of-Spain had sig­nif­i­cant­ly cleared yes­ter­day but there was a lin­ger­ing stench in the air and in­side of­fice build­ings.The of­fices of Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um, very close to the site, was still bad­ly af­fect­ed by smoke and re­mained closed for a sec­ond day. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Rae Gilbert said work­ers were sent home around lunchtime.

Gilbert said there were no com­plaints of ill­ness­es from staff but man­age­ment made the de­ci­sion as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure.She said since the fires, NP had been op­er­at­ing out of its Point-a-Pierre bond and would con­tin­ue un­til the smoke left the Sea Lots head­quar­ters.T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan said from re­ports he had re­ceived all af­fect­ed schools had re­sumed class­es.

A Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) bul­letin yes­ter­day af­ter­noon said work at the Beetham land­fill con­tin­ued on a lim­it­ed scale.The re­lease added: "We are pleased to re­port that the ma­jor­i­ty of the fires pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed have now been ex­tin­guished and our team con­tin­ues to press ahead in its ef­forts to put out the fi­nal two af­fect­ed ar­eas."We are, how­ev­er, un­able at this time to project just how soon we an­tic­i­pate this task will be ac­com­plished."

SWM­COL com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Al­i­son Awai said the com­pa­ny's ef­forts had sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­le­vi­at­ed the smoke prob­lem in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons."We will con­tin­ue to up­date the pub­lic as progress is made to­wards our ul­ti­mate goal," she added.She said the first phase of air qual­i­ty test­ing by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) had been com­plet­ed and a sec­ond was ex­pect­ed to be done yes­ter­day.

EMA com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Nicole Bachan said it had the re­sults of the first air qual­i­ty test and promised to send it to the me­dia soon.

No EMA ad­vi­so­ry

Ef­forts to get com­ments from EMA head Dr Al­lan Bachan and oth­er board mem­bers about the au­thor­i­ty's ex­act role in the in­ci­dent were un­suc­cess­ful.For­mer CEO Dr Joth Singh said the EMA's role was to test the air and that in­volved work­ing close­ly with SWM­COL and do­ing site vis­its in the burn­ing ar­eas to de­ter­mine what com­pounds were com­bust­ing.He said some kind of health ad­vi­so­ry should have been sent out to res­i­dents and peo­ple work­ing in Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons.

"The ad­vi­so­ry should have stat­ed whether they should work short­er hours, whether air-con­di­tion­ing units should be turned off," he added.En­vi­ron­men­tal­ists have warned that smoke from burn­ing land­fill sites could con­tain tox­ic can­cer-caus­ing car­cino­gens but con­tact­ed for a re­sponse, Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said dis­mis­sive­ly: "It's just smoke."The smoke will ir­ri­tate your lungs and chest and peo­ple with high res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems should stay out of the area but there is no need for an ad­vi­so­ry."

Khan said the greater con­cern was why the fires oc­curred all of a sud­den like that, im­ply­ing there might have been an agen­da be­hind it.


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