Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Since Sun­day night, the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) has been work­ing to con­tain and man­age a fire at the Beetham Land­fill.

The blaze first broke out on the east­ern side of the land­fill at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9.55 pm and was suc­cess­ful­ly con­tained with­in three hours by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice.

How­ev­er, the fire reignit­ed around 1.15 pm on Mon­day, prompt­ing a full re­de­ploy­ment of emer­gency re­sources and the im­me­di­ate clo­sure of the land­fill to the pub­lic.

The fire con­tin­ued overnight, and as of yes­ter­day morn­ing, resid­ual smoke re­mained vis­i­ble across Port-of-Spain and sur­round­ing ar­eas.

As a re­sult, the Beetham Land­fill will re­main closed un­til fur­ther no­tice, and waste col­lec­tion providers have been di­rect­ed to use the For­res Park and Gua­napo land­fills as al­ter­na­tives.

SWM­COL has urged mem­bers of the pub­lic—par­tic­u­lar­ly those with res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions—to ex­er­cise cau­tion when trav­el­ling along the Beetham High­way.

The com­pa­ny said it is work­ing dili­gent­ly to re­store nor­mal op­er­a­tions and will is­sue fur­ther up­dates as the sit­u­a­tion de­vel­ops.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) re­gard­ing con­cerns over de­te­ri­o­rat­ing air qual­i­ty linked to the fire.

The EMA said air-qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing is on­go­ing and that the pub­lic will be up­dat­ed as ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able.

How­ev­er, dur­ing at­tempts to ac­cess the EMA’s on­line air-qual­i­ty da­ta, it was not­ed that one of the most fre­quent­ly ref­er­enced mon­i­tor­ing tools—the Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter (PM) sen­sor—was not op­er­a­tional. The EMA ex­plained that the PM sen­sors were tak­en of­fline for rou­tine main­te­nance and ef­forts are un­der way to re­store them as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

In the mean­time, the EMA ad­vised that in­di­vid­u­als sen­si­tive to changes in air qual­i­ty—in­clud­ing old­er adults, chil­dren, and peo­ple with heart or lung dis­ease, res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions, or al­ler­gies—should take proac­tive steps to min­imise ex­po­sure and avoid pro­longed or stren­u­ous out­door ac­tiv­i­ty.