On Friday night, the work to extinguish the fire inside the municipal garbage dump in the Esmeraldas canton was completed, where a large fire started on Thursday afternoon.
In the area, 40 firefighters worked with firefighting units, water supply tank cars and municipal machinery, in rotating shifts.
Nine hours to control a large-scale fire in the Esmeraldas landfill
“It was a large-scale fire and coordination was carried out with all the stations and the Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas Fire Department. The support of a mother-type unit was requested,” explained Miguel Perea, the first chief of Esmeraldas.
Initially through ECU911 a possible forest fire was reported, but the firefighters from the central station upon arriving at the site found a fire of toxic materials, said the official.
The black smoke mushroom that rose behind the hill where the dump is located seemed like a bombardment, said Carlos Acosta, a merchant.
A dense cloud of toxic smoke spread through the capital of Esmeralda and in some sectors the inhabitants had trouble breathing, said Alba Mora, who lives in the El Embudo neighborhood.
Mayor Lucía Sosa and Abel Ávila, municipal director of Hygiene, estimate that this fire was caused by unknown persons who set fire to the dry forest on the hillside and spread through the area where some 300 tons of solid waste are deposited per day that are collected of the city and eight rural parishes of the Esmeraldas canton.
The Municipality of Esmeraldas carried out the sanitary landfill to avoid the bad odors emanating from these sites with the removal of earth to cover common waste.
Then a bucket or cells with geomembrane were built for the proper treatment of leachate and gases, as requested by the Ministry of the Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, Ávila explained.
The dump was previously on the old Wínchele road and was moved to a hillside near the capital of Esmeralda, which is why its inhabitants demand relocation.
School bus overturned due to collision with another vehicle on the Esmeraldas road
Meanwhile, 53 forest fires caused, including the one in the sanitary landfill, were attended by the Fire Department and video surveillance of the Municipality, between January and the 2nd of this month.
The previous November there was a smaller fire at this same Esmeraldas dump, as well as at Babahoyo and the old Quevedo dump in Los Ríos. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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