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Friday, July 18, 2025

Wind change blows smoke in Barataria

by

20140202

Crews were up to late yes­ter­day work­ing round-the-clock to en­sure the last fire at the Beetham land­fill was com­plete­ly ex­tin­guished, even as smoke con­tin­ued to en­gulf Port-of-Spain, and had spread to parts of Barataria.Man­ag­er of the land­fill Richard War­ren said yes­ter­day that work­ers were out as ear­ly as 3 am us­ing heavy equip­ment. He said the odd show­ers al­so as­sist­ed, but it cre­at­ed some chal­lenges by caus­ing mud­dy roads.

"We have been here right through try­ing to get the last bit out...The rain has helped in that re­gard, but at the same time it made mud­dy roads which could be a chal­lenge," War­ren said.He said he ex­pect­ed the sit­u­a­tion to be "back to nor­mal" by to­day.How­ev­er, res­i­dents of Barataria, Cas­cade and La­dy Young Av­enue, Mor­vant, com­plained yes­ter­day of heavy smoke af­fect­ing them, re­sult­ing in wa­tery eyes and itchy throats.One res­i­dent said she was con­fused over whether the fires were un­der con­trol or had restart­ed.

But War­ren said this was be­cause wind di­rec­tion had changed the path of the smoke flow, which no one had con­trol over, but not­ed that the smoke was not as thick as be­fore.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), Dr Stephen Ram­roop, said he was aware of the com­plaints of smoke. He said their call cen­tre was bom­bard­ed with calls from peo­ple com­plain­ing about smoke com­ing from the east of the land­fill, adding the weath­er con­di­tions and wind pat­tern had caused this.

Ram­roop said about 90 per cent of the fire had been ex­tin­guished, adding that crews from the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (SWM­COL) were try­ing their best to out the re­main­der of the burn­ing de­bris."SWM­COL has re­al­ly been try­ing but peo­ple have to re­mem­ber that these fires are deep-seat­ed," he added.

On the is­sue of se­cu­ri­ty, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith yes­ter­day said all the nec­es­sary steps have been put in place to en­sure there are no fur­ther breach­es of the law at the land­fill. He said the cause of the 12 fires, which were re­port­ed by SWM­COL as ma­li­cious­ly set, was yet to be de­ter­mined.


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