Per­sons liv­ing in and around, as well as work­ing in cap­i­tal city, Port of Spain, will have to ex­er­cise ex­treme cau­tion to­day, fol­low­ing a fire which oc­curred at the Beetham Land­fill, last night.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL) is ad­vis­ing that there is still smoke em­a­nat­ing from the land­fill.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SWM­COL) takes this op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vise com­muters en­ter­ing the cap­i­tal city and those who work and re­side in the vicin­i­ty of the land­fill to pro­ceed with cau­tion due to smoke em­a­nat­ing from the land­fill,” an of­fi­cial state­ment from the com­pa­ny said.

It added: “SWM­COL apol­o­gizes for the in­con­ve­nience to the trav­el­ing pub­lic and those with res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions as we work as­sid­u­ous­ly to have the is­sue rec­ti­fied.”

SWM­COL re­ports in its re­lease that it be­came aware “at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5 pm on the 6th, of April, of a fire at the south­ern tip of the land­fill…”: 

“Notwith­stand­ing, em­bers from the fire ig­nit­ed an ad­ja­cent sec­tion of the land­fill re­sult­ing in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, WASA, and SWM­COL’s emer­gency man­age­ment team work­ing through­out the night to have the fire brought un­der con­trol,” SWM­COL said.

The com­pa­ny said the fire was brought un­der con­trol by 10 pm.

AQI reading of ‘HAZARDOUS’, taken from EMA’s Port of Spain Monitoring Station at 8 am on 7th April 2022. (Image courtesy EMA)

Mean­while, the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) for Port of Spain cur­rent­ly is reg­is­tered as HAZ­ARDOUS at 329 points, ac­cord­ing to a read­ing tak­en at 8 am to­day, from the AQI Mon­i­tor­ing Sta­tion set up by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).

An AQI in such a high range means there is a se­ri­ous risk of res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress for every­one in the area, ac­cord­ing to the EMA’s ad­vi­so­ry on such high lev­els:

“Se­ri­ous ag­gra­va­tion of res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms in sen­si­tive groups in­clud­ing old­er adults, chil­dren, and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments and al­ler­gies,” the EMA ad­vi­so­ry warns.  “Se­ri­ous ag­gra­va­tion of heart or lung dis­ease and pre­ma­ture mor­tal­i­ty in peo­ple with heart or lung dis­ease; se­ri­ous risk of res­pi­ra­to­ry ef­fects in gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.”

“Every­one should avoid all phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty out­doors,” the EMA ad­vi­so­ry states.  “Peo­ple with heart or lung dis­ease, old­er adults, chil­dren, and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments and al­ler­gies should re­main in­doors and keep ac­tiv­i­ty lev­els low.”