Firefighters attached to the St. John’s Fire Station responded to a fire at Cooks
Garbage Disposal Dump late Thursday afternoon, but according to reports they
were unable to attend to the blaze due to the nature of the fire.
The call was received at the station at 4:45 pm making it 371 fire calls so far, this
year. However, reports from the scene indicated that the firemen did not go into
action because the nature of the fire rendered their equipment useless, under the
circumstances.
Sources close to the National Solid Waste Management Authority said the fire was
among discarded vehicular tyres, so they had to resort to other means to reduce the
spread of the fire, contain it, and eventually extinguish it.
“We have to call upon our partners at Public Works and CHAPA to bring along
some heavy-duty equipment, to help extinguish this fire. We have decided to
reduce its spread and to cut off oxygen support by burying it with soil. We have
used soil dug from around here and the other agencies will also bring additional
soil to pour on the fire,” NSWMA chairman Michael Joseph said while at the scene
on Thursday evening.
The operation to extinguish the fire went into the night with several agencies
involved.
There have been concerns that the fire could have had an impact on incoming
flights to the VC Bird International Airport as it is considered within the flight path
to the airport.
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