Rachael Es­pinet

Busi­ness own­ers and peo­ple work­ing in Port-of-Spain once again were brac­ing for the worst yes­ter­day af­ter the cap­i­tal be­came en­gulfed in smoke due to a fire at the Beetham land­fill.The fire oc­curred an hour af­ter T&T Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SWM­COL) work­ers end­ed their third con­sec­u­tive day of protest. How­ev­er, the work­ers main­tained they did not start it.

"We did not start the fire. The work­ers were in­side the lunch­room when we start­ed to see the smoke. Every year we see fires hap­pen in the dump," said Ja­son Thomas, gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the In­dus­tri­al Gen­er­al San­i­ta­tion Work­ers Union (IGSWU).Last Jan­u­ary, the city was al­so en­gulfed with tox­ic smog af­ter a large fire burned in the land­fill for days.

Yes­ter­day, an­oth­er large fire caused thick smoke to waft in­to the city and caused a traf­fic back­log along the Beetham High­way.At about 2 pm yes­ter­day, the work­ers no­ticed the land­fill was ablaze. Thomas, who was on site when T&T Guardian vis­it­ed, said the work­ers had noth­ing to do with the fire be­ing set.He said it was not un­com­mon for fires to oc­cur as there were many com­bustible items in the land­fill. He said the work­ers fin­ished their protest around 1 pm and those who were still in the area were in the lunch­room when they saw the fire.

Thomas main­tained the union would not en­cour­age any ac­tion that would be harm­ful to the gen­er­al pub­lic."We al­ways have a peace­ful sto­ry. We don't stop ve­hi­cles from com­ing in or do­ing their job," he said.IGSWU is a union made up en­tire­ly of SWM­COL work­ers.He added: "We do so much work in the land­fill but we get no re­spect.

"Peo­ple want to say all these things about us but they do not give us cred­it for all the hard work that we do. The work­ers con­tin­ue to face all these haz­ards on a dai­ly ba­sis."He main­tained that the im­prop­er way in which garbage is dis­posed of­ten led to fires."It is not a land­fill, it is a dump. On a day when it is hot a bat­tery can ex­plode and cause a fire and the garbage can catch afire," Thomas said.

He said usu­al­ly they were able to con­tain a fire be­fore it es­ca­lat­ed in­to a full blaze but since the work­ers were protest­ing they were not able to de­tect the fire when it be­gan."This was not a man-made fire. Usu­al­ly there is some­one in the back who would no­tice if there was a fire but all the work­ers were protest­ing," he said.Thomas said it was not pos­si­ble for the work­ers in the land­fill to start the fire be­cause it was they who have to help con­tain them.

"Why would we start the fire if we are the ones who have to con­tain it? The land­fill men will be the ones who have to out the fire."We have the ex­pe­ri­ence in ex­tin­guish­ing fires like this but we nev­er get the prop­er safe­ty gear to out the fire," he said.

WASA, Fire Ser­vice on scene

Yes­ter­day, SWM­COL chair Nali­ni Sook­lal said the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the Fire Ser­vices were on the scene to help con­tain the fire while of­fi­cers from the Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty.She said since the last large fire last year SWM­COL had been work­ing to find ways to con­tain fires more ef­fi­cient­ly in the dump. Among the new meth­ods be­ing used are a cold fire tech­nol­o­gy, which is like a foam.

A re­lease from the En­vi­ron­ment Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) yes­ter­day said pre­lim­i­nary re­ports in­di­cat­ed the fire was seen over the south­west­ern por­tion of the land­fill. The EMA es­ti­mat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent of the land­fill was on fire."Cur­rent sur­veil­lance of the area sug­gests that the smoke, cou­pled with the fluc­tu­at­ing wind di­rec­tion, is im­pact­ing Sea Lots and Beetham ar­eas at this time," the EMA said in a state­ment as it warned pub­lic health was of grave con­cern.

It al­so mo­bilised teams to mon­i­tor air qual­i­ty in Laven­tille, Sea Lots and the Beetham ar­eas and will con­tin­ue to con­duct reg­u­lar air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing tests as the need aris­es and ad­vise the pub­lic ac­cord­ing­ly.The EMA al­so has no­ti­fied the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA) and pub­lic health of­fi­cials to be pre­pared for peo­ple com­ing in with pos­si­ble res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems.