RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The fire at the For­res Park land­fill is con­tin­u­ing to smoul­der bring­ing clouds of tox­ic smoke across the Spring­vale com­mu­ni­ty for a third con­sec­u­tive day.

And while some have opt­ed to evac­u­ate the area, some el­der­ly res­i­dents say they’ve no choice but to hun­ker down and bear the smoke in the best way they could.

Meena John, 82, told Guardian Me­dia she has been cooped up in­side since the fire start­ed.

“It’s end­less smoke, you can­not stay in­side or out­side,” she re­vealed.

She added: “I have to lock up the win­dows and stay in the hall. I put on the fan but I can­not open the win­dows or the door be­cause of the smoke.

An­oth­er res­i­dent Haf­fi­rali Ho­sein said he had to aban­don his gar­den near the high­way be­cause of the thick smoke.

“Since Fri­day I can­not go there. It’s too much smoke. I had to leave and come home,” Ho­sein said.

He added: “The whole place stinks. Since this morn­ing the place like it dark with the smoke. You on­ly see­ing the smoke com­ing from the high­way area. It’s not nice,” Ho­sein said.

And Anand Moonoo said his two chil­dren aged ten months and sev­en years were al­so af­fect­ed.

“The ba­by cry­ing, the smoke burn­ing his eyes. We put him in a room with AC but the AC pulling in the fumes. He wheez­ing and sneez­ing,” Moonoo said. He added that his sev­en-year-old son suf­fers from asth­ma.

But the gen­er­al man­ag­er of mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion at SWM­COL David Man­swell said air qual­i­ty was con­stant­ly be­ing mon­i­tored in the area. He said teams have been work­ing fever­ish­ly to bring the fire un­der con­trol.

“It has not yet been ex­tin­guished. We still have in­ter­mit­tent smoke com­ing. We are close to 80 per cent cov­ered. The fire is on the east­ern tip and it is a bit more chal­leng­ing,” he added.

Man­swell said teams are con­tin­u­ing to re­main on the site to mon­i­tor the lev­el of smoke that was en­ter­ing the com­mu­ni­ties.

“We are hop­ing to have it un­der con­trol be­tween tonight and to­mor­row morn­ing,” he re­vealed. Man­swell said be­cause the fire oc­curred on a slope, this has posed some chal­lenges.

“How you man­age fire on land­fills is by cov­er­ing it, smoth­er­ing it. We are us­ing ex­ca­va­tors and we are bench­ing and cut­ting in­to it. We don’t use wa­ter to ex­tin­guish,” he ex­plained.

Asked what was the cause of the fire and whether it was de­lib­er­ate­ly set, Man­swell re­spond­ed: “We have no ev­i­dence of it be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly set es­pe­cial­ly in that lo­ca­tion. We are in­to the dry sea­son and any em­bers from oth­er fires in the area could have caused that. We not see­ing ev­i­dence that it is de­lib­er­ate.”

He said the air qual­i­ty tests show that the smoke is “with­in the pa­ra­me­ters.”

Man­swell al­so said SWM­COL is mov­ing to­wards the es­tab­lish­ment of en­gi­neered land­fills which will re­duce the lev­el of methane.

“We have methane be­ing di­vert­ed and methane is a con­trib­u­tor to fire. We ex­pect that the Waste Char­ac­ter­is­tics Study will be com­plet­ed this year which will tell us the amount of waste and how much waste comes in,” he ex­plained.

Man­swell said most of T&T’s land­fills have reached ca­pac­i­ty and SWM­COL was try­ing its best to man­age that.

Man­swell said the fire will be ex­tin­guished by Mon­day night in­to Tues­day morn­ing.