Fire officers and Department of Environmental Health officials have been locked in a four-day battle with ‘deep-seated hotspots’ at the George Town landfill.
The fire, which was initially reported at 6:50am on Saturday, was originally believed to be small and contained deep inside the main mound of the landfill.
Since Saturday, firefighters and DEH staff have worked round the clock, in shifts, to dig into the main mound to reach the fire.
Motorists travelling along the Esterley Tibbetts Highway, between Camana Bay and Lakeside Apartments, have been able to catch a glimpse of excavators digging into the upper western side of the solid waste mound while fire trucks douse the area.
In a statement, a Government Information Service spokesperson said the Cayman Islands Fire Service and DEH staff were “excavating and damping down underground and sometimes deep-seated hotspots at the landfill site. This is part of their preventative strategy to significantly reduce the chance of a large well developed waste fire from impacting those living or working in the area. These particular hotspots were identified by DEH staff who are proactively looking for signs of sub-surface hotspot fires during their day-to-day operations.”
The location of the fire was identified through the use of thermal imagery.
Fire officers and DEH personnel were expected to remain at the landfill through Tuesday night.
“Currently, these defensive preventative firefighting operations pose no threat to residents and businesses in the vicinity of the landfill site,” the statement said.
This is the second fire in the solid waste section of the landfill in less than a month, and the third fire at the site since the start of this year.
On 10 Feb., officers were called out to another ‘deep-seated hotspot’ fire, which a GIS spokesperson confirmed was also discovered through thermal imagery.
In January, a much bigger fire erupted at the vehicle-recycling plant at the landfill, which burned for several days. The findings of the investigation into January’s blaze are expected to become available sometime this week.
On Monday, the landfill reopened to the public, after closing over the weekend while firefighters and DEH workers tackled the fire.
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