Kali­fa Clyne

Stu­dents and work­ers fled Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day as tox­ic smoke from the Beetham land­fill over­whelmed the cap­i­tal city for the third day.The tox­ic smoke has been con­firmed to be in some cas­es 13 times over the lim­it set out in the Draft Air Pol­lu­tion Rules.The Health Min­istry said in a re­lease that the air pol­lu­tion from the land­fill site might be haz­ardous to health, es­pe­cial­ly to peo­ple who are "pre­dis­posed through hy­per­sen­si­tiv­i­ty con­di­tions such as bronchial asth­ma and der­mati­tis."

In an in­ter­view, Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan said he had asked the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) to make prepa­ra­tions, in­clud­ing en­sur­ing that clin­ics re­mained open late to treat peo­ple af­fect­ed by the smoke.The re­lease from the min­istry ad­vised af­fect­ed peo­ple to go to the near­est hos­pi­tal or health cen­tre if they de­vel­oped se­vere short­ness of breath, skin or eye ir­ri­ta­tion.The Wood­brook and El So­cor­ro Health Cen­tres were des­ig­nat­ed to re­main open un­til 9 pm.

"There have been re­ports of peo­ple com­plain­ing of throat ir­ri­ta­tion," Khan said.There were con­cerns about smoke reach­ing the hos­pi­tals, but he said as most of the hos­pi­tal rooms were air-con­di­tioned they would not be great­ly af­fect­ed.The acrid smoke spread as far as the Mu­cu­rapo Fore­shore, and forced 16 schools to send home stu­dents be­fore noon yes­ter­day and busi­ness­es in the city to close their doors.

Be­fore the end of the day's first class, stu­dents of Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School had been sent home and were seen walk­ing in the city.Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, op­po­site the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, al­so dis­missed its stu­dents ear­ly.Moth­er of three Su­san James was seen stand­ing with her chil­dren on Char­lotte Street. She said their school had called her to take the chil­dren home be­cause they were cough­ing and re­spond­ing neg­a­tive­ly to the smoke. James's daugh­ter coughed re­peat­ed­ly dur­ing the in­ter­view.

In a re­lease, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said it had giv­en ap­proval for clo­sure of schools af­fect­ed by heavy smoke em­a­nat­ing from the land­fill.Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as in­tol­er­a­ble and pre­pos­ter­ous, liken­ing it to the re­cent oil spills which af­fect­ed La Brea and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in south Trinidad."The dif­fer­ence is one is by sea and the oth­er is by air or by wind, but they are both en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters and they are both laden with dan­ger," he warned.

He said the sit­u­a­tion was not new and those in charge were com­mu­ni­cat­ing "help­less­ness."Last April, 12 fires were set in the same land­fill, caus­ing sim­i­lar dis­tress to Port-of-Spain busi­ness­es, res­i­dents and com­muters. Those fires were even­tu­al­ly put out af­ter sev­er­al days.Aboud said he al­so felt Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) was be­ing bad­ly man­aged. "Some­body needs to ex­plain how this hap­pened," he stressed."This is some­thing that is in every­one's face."

Schools closed

Sec­ondary:

Suc­cess/Laven­tille

Queen's Roy­al Col­lege

St Joseph's Con­vent, PoS

Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment

Pri­ma­ry schools:

St Rose's Girls'

Rosary Boys'

Beetham Es­tate

Beth­le­hem Girls'

Beth­le­hem Boys'

St Philip's Gov­ern­ment

Sa­cred Heart Girls'

Sa­cred Heart Boys'

East­ern Girls'

St Hil­da's Gov­ern­ment

St Ur­su­la's AC

Moul­ton Hall Methodist

Signs and symp­toms that you are be­ing af­fect­ed by smoke in­hala­tion:

�2 Cough

�2 Short­ness of breath

�2 Headache

�2 Throat ir­ri­ta­tion

�2 Soot in air­way pas­sages such as nos­trils or throat

�2 In­creased se­cre­tion of mu­cus, clear or black

�2 Hoarse­ness or noisy breath­ing

�2 Swelling and/or con­stric­tion of up­per air­ways such as nos­trils and nasal pas­sages

�2 Red, ir­ri­tat­ed eyes

�2 Changes in skin colour

�2 Nau­sea and vom­it­ing

�2 Changes in men­tal sta­tus (con­fu­sion, faint­ing, seizures, and co­ma are all po­ten­tial com­pli­ca­tions fol­low­ing smoke in­hala­tion)

If you ex­pe­ri­ence one of more of the above symp­toms, you should seek med­ical care im­me­di­ate­ly.