Yvonne Ba­boolal

Aer­i­al footage from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NSOC) yes­ter­day showed strong winds shift­ing a tox­ic plume of smoke, a quar­ter-a-mile wide and a mile long, bil­low­ing from the still-burn­ing Beetham land­fill and mov­ing to­wards the Five Is­lands.How­ev­er, by late af­ter­noon the winds had shift­ed back and a thin veil of smoke again en­veloped Port-of-Spain as it had done ear­li­er in the day.Pedes­tri­ans walked through the streets wear­ing masks and of­fice work­ers be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms of nau­sea, vom­it­ing and throat and eye ir­ri­ta­tions.The Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) said it had pro­cured dust masks for the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion to dis­trib­ute to high-risk ar­eas.Af­ter four days, ef­forts to com­plete­ly ex­tin­guish 12 fires at the Beetham dump, be­lieved to be ma­li­cious­ly start­ed, have not been suc­cess­ful. One fire lin­gered yes­ter­day and this again caused pan­ic."We are treat­ing with one large area at the mo­ment," Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) chair­man Nali­ni Sook­lal told the me­dia dur­ing a press con­fer­ence."We have in­creased re­sources and are fever­ish­ly work­ing on it," she added.

Asked the size of the area un­der com­bus­tion, Sook­lal said she could not say. What she did say, how­ev­er, was that the land­fill cov­ered two acres of land.Sook­lal said SWM­COL, with the as­sis­tance of the San Juan Laven­tille and Diego Mar­tin re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, which were pro­vid­ing trucks and equip­ment, was bat­tling with a fire that was "two-fold. "There is the sur­face fire and the sub-sur­face com­po­nent," she said.Sook­lal and key stake­hold­ers con­cerned with the fire, in­clud­ing the ODPM, En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, met at the NSOC at Knowsley, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing to dis­cuss strat­e­gy.Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh told the T&T Guardian Cab­i­net de­cid­ed yes­ter­day to de­ploy con­sid­er­able re­sources to SWM­COL and the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, un­der which it fell, to in­ten­si­fy ef­forts to ex­tin­guish the fire. He said the en­gi­neer­ing corps of the De­fence Force al­so had been de­ployed.

Min­is­ter of Works Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan was re­port­ed­ly seen at the land­fill yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.Af­ter a 90-minute meet­ing, NSOC ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Com­man­der Garvin Heer­ah, ODPM CEO Dr Stephen Ram­roop, Port-of-Spain May­or Ray­mond Tim Kee and Sook­lal ad­dressed the me­dia.Heer­ah said the NSOC was alert­ed af­ter the fires but on the ad­vice of the EMA and the ODPM he was sat­is­fied the mat­ter was be­ing ad­dressed."There is to be no evac­u­a­tion of Port-of-Spain," he said.Asked about an evac­u­a­tion, Tim Kee said the city cor­po­ra­tion would be guid­ed by the EMA and oth­er agen­cies.Ram­roop said one of the in­di­ca­tors to tell the ODPM what was hap­pen­ing was an in­crease in the num­ber of pa­tients with res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments at the hos­pi­tals."There has been no in­crease in peo­ple com­ing to the emer­gency de­part­ments with res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments," he said, adding a lot of agen­cies were pool­ing their re­sources and com­mand­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

Re­sults of EMA tests showed that par­tic­u­lates in the air near Sea Lots were 13 times above the ac­cept­able lev­el and ten times more in Port-of-Spain.

How­ev­er, Ram­roop said, that alone did not de­ter­mine whether the in­ci­dent was to be deemed an en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter and not­ed EMA tests showed an im­proved con­t­a­m­i­na­tion lev­el.He said light­ing fires with plas­tic at home and jog­ging around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah could give more pol­lu­tion than what was be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced from the dump. His state­ment has in­curred the wrath of en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists.Aer­i­al footage of the smoke was shown to the me­dia in­side a "high se­cu­ri­ty" room at the NSOC by a cap­tain from the Air Op­er­a­tions Unit. It showed the long mass of smoke em­a­nat­ing from the land­fill at 10 am yes­ter­day.The cap­tain ex­plained that ear­li­er in the morn­ing, the en­tire north­ern front, in­clud­ing Port-of-Spain, was cov­ered in the land­fill smoke.

Dri­vers head­ing to Port-of-Spain ear­ly yes­ter­day com­plained they could hard­ly see on the Beetham High­way be­cause of the smoke. By mid-morn­ing, the winds had moved the smoke south­west, away from land.The Met Of­fice at Pi­ar­co said it had been record­ing south­east­er­ly winds all week. It is a north­east­er­ly wind that would de­flect the smoke to the south­west.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer: Fire deep-seat­ed

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Na­yar Ram­per­sad said yes­ter­day the fire at the Beetham land­fill was "deep- seat­ed," un­der heavy lay­ers of garbage and that was why it was not be­ing ex­tin­guished quick­ly.

He said fire of­fi­cers from the North­ern Di­vi­sion, from the be­gin­ning, have been work­ing with SWM­COL to get the fire un­der con­trol."But it is labour in­ten­sive and re­quires heavy ma­chin­ery to ex­tin­guish. There is a whole pile of garbage that has set­tled there for months and years."The fire is smoul­der­ing deep un­der the garbage heap and heavy equip­ment is need­ed to turn over the rub­bish and that's why it is not be­ing ex­tin­guished quick­ly," he added.Ram­per­sad said the Fire Ser­vices was one of the first re­spon­ders to the Beetham haz­ard and had been one of the more ag­gres­sive re­spon­dents. He said of­fi­cers have al­so been as­sist­ing the ODPM in mak­ing calls to rel­e­vant agen­cies.