Yvonne Ba­boolal

Strong, po­ten­tial­ly tox­ic smoke and fumes from 12 fires in the Beetham dump, re­port­ed­ly lit by an­gry Beetham Es­tate res­i­dents, yes­ter­day forced the clo­sure of sev­er­al near­by com­pa­nies and schools af­ter it blan­ket­ed Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons.Staff, teach­ers and chil­dren were sent home. Re­ports said they were ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.There were re­ports that peo­ple liv­ing in the Port-of-Spain area suf­fer­ing from asth­ma al­so were bad­ly af­fect­ed.Fires were re­port­ed­ly burn­ing at 12 sep­a­rate spots on the land­fill site.Up to 4.30 pm yes­ter­day, the T&T Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL) said it had ex­pe­ri­enced on­ly "lim­it­ed suc­cess in con­tain­ing some of the af­fect­ed ar­eas."SWM­COL said that re­sult­ed in some re­lief to the Port-of-Spain ar­eas and en­vi­rons with road and am­bi­ent vis­i­bil­i­ty no­tably im­proved."How­ev­er, SWM­COL staff and con­tribut­ing agen­cies are con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to con­tain the fires on the east­ern side of the land­fill which are still alight at the mo­ment."

This means that the threat could con­tin­ue in­to to­day for cit­i­zens liv­ing, work­ing or con­duct­ing any form of ac­tiv­i­ty in and around the city.Hun­dreds of dri­vers head­ing in­to Port-of-Spain ear­ly yes­ter­day had to dri­ve in dan­ger­ous­ly low vis­i­bil­i­ty near the area, bare­ly mak­ing out the ve­hi­cle in front of them, it was re­port­ed."I came to town around 6.30 am and I couldn't see when I was dri­ving over the fly­over (near John John). The place was com­plete­ly cov­ered in smoke."I just took my time and kept dri­ving. It was very fright­en­ing," a mo­torist said.Po­lice said no ac­ci­dents were re­port­ed from the in­ci­dent.Up un­til late af­ter­noon, a strong scent filled the air as far as down­town Port-of-Spain.The in­ci­dent forced the in­ter­ven­tion of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) which, from 4 am, be­gan co-or­di­nat­ing re­spons­es from sev­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Fire Ser­vices and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).

ODPM CEO Dr Stephen Ram­roop, de­scrib­ing the dis­tur­bance not as a dis­as­ter but an en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ard, called for the clo­sure of the dump.He said the ODPM was on alert from Sun­day night af­ter re­ports that protest­ing Beetham res­i­dents had lit fires in the dump.He said vis­i­bil­i­ty was so poor ear­ly in the morn­ing that mo­torists had to put on their fog lights and of­fi­cers were called out to di­rect traf­fic. Ram­roop said when the sun came up it dis­si­pat­ed much of the smoke and some of the tox­i­c­i­ty.The in­ci­dent be­lieved to have sparked the res­i­dents in­to start­ing the fires un­fold­ed on Sun­day morn­ing af­ter Beetham res­i­dent Randy Williams was re­port­ed­ly shot in the legs by the po­lice on mo­bile pa­trol near the land­fill.The po­lice said the man was shot af­ter he re­peat­ed­ly threw stones at their ve­hi­cle and re­fused to fol­low their or­ders to stop do­ing so.SWM­COL gen­er­al man­ag­er, sales, mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, George Elias, said the com­pa­ny worked as­sid­u­ous­ly with the Fire Ser­vices to bring the fires un­der con­trol yes­ter­day.The Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Unit of the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the EMA and the ODPM al­so pro­vid­ed valu­able sup­port to the ef­fort, he said.He said the fires, which "start­ed on Sun­day and were un­planned," and were burn­ing at more than 12 sep­a­rate lo­ca­tions on the land­fill, mak­ing it ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to man­age and con­trol.

SWM­COL ap­pealed to users of the Beetham dump to di­vert to its two oth­er land­fill sites at For­res Park and Gua­napo to as­sist in bring­ing the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

Ear­ly yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) al­so sent out a re­lease stat­ing its head of­fice at Na­tion­al Dri­ve, Sea Lots, near the Beetham land­fill, was closed for the day as em­ploy­ees were ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan said he got re­ports that a num­ber of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools near the Beetham had to be closed be­cause of the smoke and fumes."The prin­ci­pal has that dis­cre­tionary pow­er," he said.Ex­cel Com­pos­ite School in the Beetham, St Phillip's Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School on the Old St Joseph Road, Laven­tille, and Suc­cess/Laven­tille Com­pos­ite School were all re­port­ed­ly af­fect­ed by the smoke and fumes em­a­nat­ing from the Beetham fires.This was the sec­ond time in un­der a year that fires at the land­fill had left Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons blan­ket­ed in tox­ic smoke. On May 23 last year, fires al­so raged at the site and the au­thor­i­ties bat­tled for over four days to bring them un­der con­trol.

The lat­est Beetham fires al­so come one month af­ter 11 oil spills dev­as­tat­ed T&T's south­west­ern coast.