Smoke from the fire at the Belize City dump continues to smother parts of the city but the news tonight is that it should be under control within 48 hours. That is the timeline given by NEMO - the National Emergency Management Organization which swooped in earlier this week to lead the fight against the massive fire spanning 20 acres. Since 8 pm last night, a 12 inch dredge has been pumping 200 thousand gallons of water per hour from the Burdon Canal into the dump. The National Emergency Management Organization met this afternoon and CEO in the NEMO Ministry Col. George Lovell was optmistic.
George Lovell, CEO – Ministry of NEMO
“We have a dredge that is providing water at the old dumpsite and this dredge is provided by the Cisco Construction Limited and that dredge is putting some 3,000 or so gallons of water per minute on the site. On the new dumpsite, we have the National Fire Service which is working along with an excavator and the fire pump to extinguish that dumpsite and hopefully by midnight tonight
that particular dumpsite will be extinguished.
We estimate that it will take us 48 hours in the first instance to at least bring the smoke to a 80% manageable solution and it will take us another 48 or so hours after that for us to have it down to a situation where we can say that the smoke has been completely dealt with. Thereafter we will level the debris and we will have it capped with aggregates to a height of about one foot only, and I want to emphasize only in the area that we currently identify as hotspots. At the end of seven days we intend, and that is 7 days from today, we intend to hand over back to the city for management of the site.”
And while NEMO plans to return control of the dump to the City Council, the question is why it took so long for NEMO to step in. That is considering that the dump has been burning since April. Well according to NEMO, that’s not how it works. Col. Lovell says the City Council had to request help and since they didn’t, NEMO had to watch from the sidelines.
George Lovell,
“You’re asking me why is it that we took so long to call a national emergency, I am saying that there is no textbook solution as to when you call anything a national emergency. Last year we had very much the same thing and NEMO was not called in.
It is not like we had this level of fire throughout the whole thing. There were two separate fires. We had one that was managed by the City Council, another broke out and the one that broke out later seemed to be bigger and outside their control and so they asked for help. And it looks when you look at the whole thing as though we were dragging our feet and waiting for this thing to get to this extent but that is not so. The City Council and the Fire Department all along was managing the whole event.”
