Camille Clarke

Po­ten­tial­ly tox­ic smoke fil­tered through the city of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day af­ter yet an­oth­er overnight fire at the Beetham land­fill.

The dump was closed for busi­ness yes­ter­day as au­thor­i­ties fo­cussed on ex­tin­guish­ing the fire at the east­ern end of the fa­cil­i­ty.

Yes­ter­day, thick smoke was seen over the Beetham, Sea Lots and neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Of­fi­cials at the Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) ad­vised that ve­hi­cles car­ry­ing waste ma­te­r­i­al should di­vert to an­oth­er land­fill site.

In April last year, an­oth­er large fire caused thick smoke to waft in­to the city and caused a traf­fic back­log along the Beetham High­way. Vis­i­tors to the city had to re­sort to wear­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry masks to avoid breath­ing in the fumes. In Jan­u­ary 2014, the city was al­so en­gulfed with tox­ic smog af­ter a large fire burned in the land­fill or days.

One of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said that the fire was still burn­ing at the dump.

"The fire is still in the land­fill but it is re­duced... We have closed the land­fill and stake­hold­ers ser­vices should go to Gua­napo Land­fill (Ari­ma) or For­res Park in Clax­ton Bay tem­porar­i­ly.

"The smoke is resid­ual and not harm­ful and the smoke is blow­ing in­to the land­fill or out to sea de­pend­ing on the wind and di­rec­tion," the of­fi­cial said.

She said il­le­gal scav­eng­ing was to blame for the fire and 60 per cent of the fire was ex­tin­guished.

"The smoke is not af­fect­ing the Port-of-Spain area but we ad­vise all com­muters to pro­ceed with cau­tion along the Beetham area. It will re­main closed un­til fur­ther no­tice," she said.

A state­ment from the com­pa­ny at 3.22 pm yes­ter­day con­firmed that the fire was start­ed by il­le­gal sal­vaging. It stat­ed that 60 per cent of the fire had been ex­tin­guished and the smoke was not af­fect­ing Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons due to the wind di­rec­tion. How­ev­er, SWM­COL ad­vised all com­muters to pro­ceed with cau­tion along the Beetham high­way.

The land­fill, the state­ment said, would re­main closed to­day un­til fur­ther no­tice.

Staff at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, Fire Ser­vice, En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the Po­lice Ser­vice were as­sist­ing.

Act­ing deputy fire of­fi­cer Ken­ny Gopaul said that the fire was burn­ing on 50 acres of garbage and was still smoul­der­ing.

"We have an ap­pli­ance and wa­ter ten­der out there. It is not pos­ing a threat to the en­vi­ron­ment or in­dus­tri­al ar­eas but it is still smoul­der­ing," he said yes­ter­day.

Gopaul said the fire was deep-seat­ed and the fire-fight­ers didn't know what was burn­ing un­der­neath.

"We try to do a lot of smoth­er­ing with dirt in­stead of wa­ter so it won't get in the wa­ter ways," he said.