Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Thick smoke blan­ket­ed the west­ern coast off San Fer­nan­do for sev­er­al hours on Sun­day night af­ter fire broke out be­hind Roodal Ceme­tery, de­stroy­ing mounds of waste from the Em­ba­cadere land­fill, spew­ing po­ten­tial­ly tox­ic fumes in­to near­by homes.

The fire, which last­ed for sev­er­al hours, prompt­ed a vis­it from San Fer­nan­do May­or Kaz­im Ho­sein, who called for an in­crease in fines for those set­ting out­door fires with­out a per­mit.

Say­ing he was out­raged at the fre­quent fires at the land­fill, Ho­sein said a com­mit­tee was set up to ad­dress the mat­ter.

"We are look­ing in­to the clo­sure of the dump. It is sit­u­at­ed at the heart of the city and we have set up a com­mit­tee to look at do­ing con­sul­ta­tions for the clo­sure of the dump," Ho­sein said. He added that the res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties on the out­skirts of the city were af­fect­ed by the smoke.

"Peo­ple bring a lot of white waste and dump it at this site. We want this land­fill to be closed be­cause there is a big hous­ing area around it," Ho­sein said.

Say­ing it was dif­fi­cult to catch the cul­prits who lit fires at the dump, Ho­sein said he hoped in­creased fines would act as a de­ter­rent.

Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trol of­fi­cers vis­it­ed the land­fill dur­ing the fire yes­ter­day. Fire­fight­ers al­so ar­rived and man­aged to keep the fire from spread­ing over the wall in­to the Roodal Ceme­tery.

Ear­li­er this week, se­nior fire of­fi­cers called on cit­i­zens to ob­tain fire per­mits be­fore they set any out­door fires. Any­one found light­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate fires could face a fine of $1,500 and six months im­pris­on­ment.

Over the past week, more than 20 bush fires were record­ed through­out T&T.

Shalis­er Theodore-Hospedales and her sev­en-year-old son Hezeki­ah Hospedales died as a re­sult of bush fires on April 1. On March 25, Forestry Di­vi­sion of­fi­cer Kei­th Camp­bell al­so died while bat­tling a for­est fire at La­dy Chan­cel­lor Hill, St Ann's. Three of his col­leagues were al­so hurt in that in­ci­dent.

Un­der the Agri­cul­tur­al Fires Act (Ch63:02 Act 20 of 1965) a per­mit, ob­tain­able from the near­est fire sta­tion, is re­quired to light out­door fires big or small, dur­ing the pe­ri­od De­cem­ber 1 to June 30.