The Gua­napo Land­fill is ex­pect­ed to re­sume reg­u­lar op­er­a­tions to­day.

A state­ment from the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment in­di­cates that sev­er­al re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions spent the week­end work­ing joint­ly with SWM­COL teams, as well as the T&T Fire Ser­vice and WASA, on smoke and fire sup­pres­sion ini­tia­tives at the site.

The land­fill's op­er­a­tions were shut down last Wednes­day Jan­u­ary 29th, be­cause of a fire on the site.

On Fri­day, it was re­port­ed that 50 to 60 per cent of the smoke sup­pres­sant ex­er­cise had been ex­e­cut­ed, re­sult­ing in sig­nif­i­cant smoke re­duc­tion in the area.

Wa­ter trucks from sev­er­al Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions have been as­sist­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice in the smoke sup­pres­sion ex­er­cise:

- Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion

- Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion

- San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion

- Port of Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion

- San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion

- Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion

The ODPM al­so was in­volved, and re­ports that fur­ther air qual­i­ty tests will be car­ried out to mea­sure and doc­u­ment the suc­cess of the ef­forts. The ODPM warns that pock­ets of resid­ual smoke can be ex­pect­ed across var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties in the sur­round­ing ar­eas.

Scenes from the Guanapo Landfill site, over the weekend...

MINISTRY OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Mean­while, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­istry ad­vis­es res­i­dents of com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing the Gua­napo Land­fill to take pre­cau­tions such as:

- Lim­it­ing out­door ex­po­sure where pos­si­ble

- Keep­ing doors and win­dows closed

- Keep­ing the fresh-air in­take of air-con­di­tion­ing units closed

- Wear­ing a dust mask

- In­creas­ing flu­id in­takes

- Keep­ing your in­haler or al­ler­gy med­i­cine close to hand, if you use these reg­u­lar­ly

The min­istry al­so ad­vis­es those with res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es or chal­lenges to pay close at­ten­tion to their symp­toms and vis­it the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency Unit at the near­est hos­pi­tal should they see a change for the worse. In ad­di­tion, cit­i­zens are urged to keep an eye on chil­dren, the el­der­ly and/or sick­ly per­sons and oth­er in­di­vid­u­als who may be more vul­ner­a­ble to com­pli­ca­tions brought on by smoke in­hala­tion.

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Sto­ry by NEWS DESK

Im­ages cour­tesy MIN­ISTRY OF LO­CAL GOV­ERN­MENT AND RUR­AL DE­VEL­OP­MENT