Ot­to Car­ring­ton

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice has re­port­ed over 150 bush­fires for 2023 and fire fight­ers are now al­so urg­ing the pub­lic to be care­ful with set­ting fire out­doors in the wake of two ma­jor bush­fires this week in El So­cor­ro and La Brea.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, head of the TTFS North­ern Di­vi­sion, As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Earl Samp­son, said the dump­ing of waste such as tyres, do­mes­tic ap­pli­ances and e-waste are now pos­ing a new chal­lenge for them dur­ing the dry sea­son. He said when such ma­te­r­i­al burns it pos­es a health and en­vi­ron­men­tal risk for his fire of­fi­cers, the pub­lic and the en­vi­ron­ment.

For the year thus far, the Fire Ser­vice has re­port­ed 64 bush­fires in Jan­u­ary and 92 in Feb­ru­ary, which has al­ready sur­passed last year’s re­port­ed fig­ures.

“We are in the height of the dry sea­son, or oth­er­wise known as the bush­fire sea­son, which runs from De­cem­ber to June 30th. We are in the third month of the year, in the mid­dle of March, and we have been en­coun­ter­ing nu­mer­ous bush fires. These fires are start­ed by per­sons or per­sons un­known, some­times they are known, they are ac­tu­al­ly found at the sites at times. Fires are start­ed by per­sons clear­ing land for agri­cul­ture for plant­i­ng. Fires are start­ed by peo­ple sim­ply burn­ing rub­bish at the back of their prop­er­ties, not un­der­stand­ing the dry­ness and not un­der­stand­ing the con­se­quences of the ac­tions. Of course, there are in­stances when there may be dis­card­ed cig­a­rette butts and a host of oth­er rea­sons and caus­es of these fires.”

He said the is­sue of in­dis­crim­i­nate dump­ing of rub­bish and oth­er waste has cre­at­ed a ma­jor prob­lem for them this year.

“Peo­ple have been dump­ing com­bustible ma­te­ri­als that have added to the woes that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice in re­spond­ing to these in­ci­dents. It is now adding an ad­di­tion­al source of con­cern to us,” ACF Samp­son said.

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, he said the Fire Ser­vice on Thurs­day bat­tled a ma­jor bush­fire in El So­cor­ro, San Juan, in an rea which turned out to be an il­le­gal waste dump.

“Over the last two days, and we en­coun­tered for in­stance yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) in the El So­cor­ro South area, what was a bush­fire turned out to be a dump for tyres and you would see from the videos the num­ber of tyres that we en­coun­tered, the of­fi­cers en­coun­tered,” he said.

“There was an­oth­er fire in the Cunu­pia area that the Tu­na­puna fire sta­tions re­spond­ed to and the of­fi­cer re­port­ed en­coun­ter­ing the ex­act same phe­nom­e­non. El So­cor­ro fire was so over­whelm­ing, the of­fi­cers had to em­ploy the use of foam, in ad­di­tion with the help of an ex­ca­va­tor owned by res­i­dents. A res­i­dent in the area was able to utilise sand and dirt to as­sist in bring­ing the fire un­der con­trol. One day af­ter, we re­turned to the site and the area still has smoul­der­ing tyres left by the ef­fects of the fire.”

He added, “I can’t be­gin to em­pha­sise to Trinidad and To­ba­go the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact of these tyres. So, of­ten­times, peo­ple are not cog­nizant of the ef­fects of their ac­tions. So, this is an ap­peal to Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are at the height of the bush­fire sea­son that re­quires a fire per­mit for burn­ing any out­door fires. Fire per­mits can be ob­tained at fire sta­tions near­est to you. You will be ad­vised by a fire guardian as to what you should and shouldn’t do if you in­di­cate that you have lands to clear or burn.

“So, as we con­tin­ue, we have three months left or two, Trinidad and To­ba­go we want to ap­peal, if you look around you would recog­nise how dry our en­vi­ron­ment is. You would recog­nise that there are fires burn­ing all around.”