Small ‘challenging’ fire persists at the dump

| 22/05/2020 | 10 Comments
Cayman News Service
Small fire at the George Town dump, May 2020

(CNS) Updated Saturday: The Cayman Islands Fire Service (CIFS) reported Saturday that they are still at the George Town dump trying to extinguish “a small but challenging fire”. CIFS said that a deep seated vein of burning waste is causing a small amount of smoke at the scene, but said there is no impact to surrounding residents and businesses.

CIFS crews and staffs from the Department of Environmental Health are expected to continue to excavate and dampen down the affected area throughout the day (23 May).

The small fire was discovered Wednesday and believed to have been extinguished that day but flared up again early Friday morning, 22 May, when fire crews were called back to the dump.

CIFS said in a release Friday morning that DEH staff saw that the area was smouldering during morning inspections and called the fire service at 7.15am on Friday.

There were no flames but smoke was emanating from the same area of the site affected by the small fire this week, the release said.

“It is not unusual to have a vein of deep seated fire between compacted layers smoulder and re-emerge,” Chief Fire Officer Paul Walker said Friday. “This is precisely why we keep equipment on site in the days after a landfill incident to allow us to quickly deploy. I wish to thank DEH colleagues for their continued close cooperation in dealing with this challenging matter.”


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Category: Environmental Health, Health, Local News

Comments (10)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    I’ve never seen so many dump fires as we have had in the last year. Maybe, hopefully, it just because the dry season was so dry this year and not because of anything going on under the pile.

  2. Anonymous says:

    UPDATE: Saturday May 22nd

    Prayers have been answered and the skies have opened, providing us with the needed rain to extinguish the fire once and for all. We are now good to go…..until the end of 2020 hurricane season when the sleeping dragon will reawaken.

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  3. Anonymous says:

    Today’s rain should help!!!

  4. Anonymous says:

    Organic compose generates tremendous amounts of heat, enough to heat your entire house and water.

    Now a chemical compose that is highly flammable? I think you get the heat picture, if not as the Fire department for the FLIR heat camera footage they take from the helis.

    Now after we close the schools for covid the next will be another fire.

    If we do not shut down this toxic zone it will continue to effect all of us, and unlike the virus can be gone in your system in a few weeks/months.

    The half life for these compounds are hundred of years just to reduce to half of the exposure levels.

    Stop Dumping In the DUMP!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life

    Half-life (symbol t1⁄2) is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo, or how long stable atoms survive, radioactive decay. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential or non-exponential decay. For example, the medical sciences refer to the biological half-life of drugs and other chemicals in the human body. The converse of half-life is doubling time.

  5. 32N64W says:

    Time to build d incinerator and supply power to d grid.

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  6. Anonymous says:

    Alright geniuses, last night wind speeds had picked up and before you laid your head down for the night did it occur to you that the small fire you supposedly extinguished might reignite? It occurred to me so I wasn’t surprised to find out that it did. Does anyone out there worry like me that it might blow up? I am not a scientist but all that pressure building up must have to go somewhere eventually. Is there anyone out there qualified to answer this question?

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  7. Anonymous says:

    Shouldn’t the workers have some form of personal protective equipment…

    12
  8. Anonymous says:

    Time to open a fire station at the dump

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