Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

As the 2026 dry sea­son tight­ens its grip on the land­scape, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen has is­sued a stark warn­ing, say­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s strug­gle with bush­fires is be­ing fu­elled by a “cul­ture of law­less­ness” re­gard­ing lit­ter­ing and il­le­gal dump­ing.

Speak­ing at the in­au­gur­al Na­tion­al Bush­fire Con­fer­ence re­cent­ly, Ameen did not hold back when de­scrib­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal habits of cit­i­zens.

Ad­dress­ing a room of stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice (TTFS), En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and all 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, Ameen chal­lenged the pub­lic to look be­yond the con­ve­nience of il­le­gal dis­pos­al, not­ing that what many con­sid­er “mi­nor of­fences” have ma­jor con­se­quences.

“Peo­ple vex when some­body calls Trinidad and To­ba­go a law­less dump,” Min­is­ter Ameen re­marked.

“We in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment know all too well about il­le­gal dump­ing. You go and you clear the site and next day you’re see­ing tyres, truck­loads of co­conut shells and house­hold garbage. All laws are to be obeyed.”

Ameen said this cul­ture ex­tends to throw­ing bot­tles in drains and dis­card­ing house­hold waste on the road­side.

In the dry sea­son, she said these dump sites be­come con­cen­trat­ed fu­el pack­ages that make bush­fires hard­er to con­trol and more like­ly to spread in­to res­i­den­tial ar­eas.

The min­is­ter al­so iden­ti­fied some caus­es.

“Farm­ers burn­ing to use land for agri­cul­ture, land clear­ing, il­le­gal dump­ing. Pro­longed dry spells and high winds as­sist the fires, but the con­di­tions of­ten are man-made, like the care­less dis­pos­al of light­ed cig­a­rettes. All of these are pre­ventable.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Jude Rogers, a fire sub of­fi­cer with­in the Fire Pre­ven­tion Cen­tral De­part­ment, de­tailed the tech­ni­cal re­al­i­ty of how lit­ter sparks these fires.

Be­yond ac­ci­den­tal ig­ni­tions, Rogers iden­ti­fied a trend where in­di­vid­u­als use fire to process dis­card­ed waste for prof­it.

“What you find hap­pen­ing in a lot of com­mu­ni­ties, we have per­sons who may want to re­claim ma­te­r­i­al that they want to take the dump,” Rogers ex­plained.

He said peo­ple would some­times burn out­er ma­te­ri­als (such as in­su­la­tion) to get to the valu­able ma­te­r­i­al be­low. When this is done with­in the con­fines of the for­est, it can some­times trig­ger a bush­fire.

Rogers al­so warned home­own­ers that the prox­im­i­ty of waste to their dwellings is a crit­i­cal risk fac­tor.

“You would not want to ac­cu­mu­late waste in very close prox­im­i­ty to the ex­ter­nal walls of your prop­er­ty. If you have to store wood­en ma­te­r­i­al and oth­er com­bustible ma­te­r­i­al, you want to store that away from your build­ing,” he ad­vised.

Pre­sen­ta­tions at the con­fer­ence high­light­ed that the im­pact of these fires reach­es far be­yond scorched earth. Re­search pre­sent­ed by health and en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­perts de­tailed the se­vere strain on pub­lic health, specif­i­cal­ly the spike in res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress caused by smoke in­hala­tion.

Ex­perts re­vealed that eco­nom­i­cal­ly, the coun­try faces a dou­ble-edged sword – the high cost of the emer­gency re­sponse and the loss of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

As fire crews are di­vert­ed to ex­tin­guish blazes, their ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond to oth­er life-threat­en­ing emer­gen­cies is stretched thin.

The con­fer­ence al­so served as a plat­form to strength­en in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Fire Ser­vice and the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice to bet­ter pre­dict high-risk days. How­ev­er, of­fi­cials stressed that leg­is­la­tion must be the back­bone of pre­ven­tion.

While a le­gal fire per­mit costs on­ly $10, the penal­ty for light­ing an il­le­gal fire or con­tribut­ing to haz­ardous con­di­tions through dump­ing can lead to a $20,000 fine and im­pris­on­ment.

Rogers said the ul­ti­mate goal of the TTFS is “ze­ro death by fires,” but said achiev­ing this re­quires a na­tion­al shift in be­hav­iour.