If it bleeds, it leads, the old journalistic aphorism goes. But a better motto for Grand Cayman over the past two decades might be: if it burns, it churns.
The sight of the dump ablaze on the cover of the Compass last Friday was a familiar one for our readers. So much so, that a time traveller from the future picking up a newspaper would have a hard time establishing which decade, let alone which year, they had landed in.
George Town landfill fires have hit the cover of the Compass on at least 10 separate occasions over the past 22 years. Countless other blazes were carried on the inside pages. Official stats indicate a total of 110 landfill fires in the past two decades.
These stories reflect only the ones that were big enough to garner front-page attention.
December 2004
While there were significant fires before this date, this appears to be the first to warrant the front-page treatment. Reported by one of the legends of Cayman journalism, Carol Winker, less than three months after Hurricane Ivan ravaged Grand Cayman, the piece carried a now familiar photograph of a firefighter dousing the smouldering ashes of the dump with a power hose. Spontaneous combustion was the suspected cause at the time of the report, which ran under the headline: ‘Landfill fire blackens sky’.
August 2007
Motorists and cyclists struggle through a haze of smoke on the Esterley Tibbetts Highway – then a two-lane road often referred to as the ‘Harquail Bypass’ – on the cover of the Compass in August 2007. The blaze, dubbed a ‘towering inferno’ in the headline, took more than 12 hours to put out, the paper reported.
May 2008
By May the following year, fires at the landfill were already common enough to warrant a weary ‘again’ from the Compass headline writers. This time, fire broke out in the residential waste section and spontaneous combustion – likely caused by methane build-up at the dump site – was listed as the cause. The headline: ‘Fire plagues dump again’.
August 2009
A massive, deep-seated fire broke out in a large residential trash mound on a Sunday evening, requiring firefighters using bulldozers to dig to the source of the flames. The Compass cover ran the striking image of two firefighters backlit by the orange flames against the night sky under the headline: ‘Dump blaze said to be controlled’.
December 2013
This was the big one and perhaps still the most significant of the many landfill fires to have plagued the site. This fire occurred just days before Christmas when Grand Cayman was at near capacity with tourists. The Compass produced a special edition with a poster front page – then a rarity – showing an orange and black cloud erupting from a pile of tyres.
An inside spread carried a striking full-page image, shot from a helicopter, of a cruise ship approaching the island with a cloud of smoke blackening the sky for miles around. The fire burned for much of the day. The Compass special edition proclaimed simply: ‘Inferno at the landfill.’
February 2014
Less than two months later, the dump was back on the cover after a deep-seated blaze in the residential trash pile at the southern end of the site. Broken-down equipment hampered firefighting operations, the Compass reported, under the headline: ‘Again! Firefighters battle dump blaze’.
January 2020
During a period of relative quiet on the fire front, the landfill was often on the front pages for the right reasons, including cover articles on the shredding and disposal of the large pile of combustible tyres and the signing of the ReGen deal to replace the eyesore with waste-to-energy and recycling facilities.
That all changed in January 2020, when the site burst into flames again. This time, it started in the vehicle recycling plant. Thick black smoke prompted the closure of schools and roads.
March 2020
Just days before the COVID-19 pandemic put the people of the Cayman Islands on lockdown, a separate deep-seated fire at the landfill burned for three days in March 2020, sparking back-to-back covers from the Compass, then printing daily. Firefighters worked around the clock to beat back the flames amid fears that it could spread to neighbouring communities. Then-Premier Alden McLaughlin gave an interview to the paper from the site, issuing a public apology.
“I want to say how sorry I am, and the entire government is, about yet another one of these massive landfill fires,” he said, while re-affirming the government’s intention to move forward with the stalled ReGen project.
March 2021
Almost a year to the day after that fire, the Compass was reporting a familiar scenario: schools closed, traffic diverted, evacuation shelters on standby and flames emerging from the dump. Landfill officials admitted they had “no idea” how the latest fire, which took around 20 hours to extinguish, had started. The Compass headline captured the feeling, simply stating: ‘Again?’
April 2026
After a period of relative calm, during which the two main mounds – so often the source of the flames – were capped and covered as part of advance works for the ReGen deal, and new compacting equipment brought on island, the landfill burst back onto the cover again last week.
This time, there was no silver lining of a solution in sight. The ReGen project had been abandoned and a new fill site close to the road was accumulating up to 130,000 tons of waste a year. The blaze took around 30 hours to extinguish, but firefighters remained on site throughout the weekend. The Compass led with: ‘Landfill in flames again.’
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The words that best describe the feeling after reading and seeing the photos are disgusted, embarrassed, scary, frustrated, anxious, and enraged.
Firefighters tackling intense, toxic, open-air dump fires require specialized Personal Protective Equipment designed to handle extreme heat and chemical fumes.
Because dump fires produce highly toxic fumes, a Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus must be mandatory, along with the fire-resistant clothing, specialized helmets designed for heat and falling debris, anti-fog goggles or face shields, and specialized boots. What do you see from the pictures in this article?
There’s someone whose job is to keep firefighters safe while they extinguish hellish fires. Do they even have PPE? I just hope that firefighters get free health insurance for life and life insurance.
I’m at a loss as to why there’s such a disregard for health and life in the Cayman Islands, and why the public remains so passive. Countless professionals must know, or at least suspect, that these landfill fires pose a severe long-term threat to everyone’s life—from current residents to future generations. Visitors to Grand Cayman are also vulnerable to the toxic effects of the landfill fires.
The only solution to this madness is to stop everything and focus entirely on waste management and recycling by hiring overseas experts to expediently establish modern-day systems using the latest technology.
China and Japan are considered global leaders in advanced waste management, particularly in applying “circular economy” principles and state-of-the-art recycling technologies to resource-constrained environments like small islands and densely populated, land-scarce cities.
NO $$$$$$$$$$$for the dump but you spend $ 500,000 to kill iguanas. This is proof that you can NOT fix stupid.
A better motto would be, “When it comes to Muck everyone involved passes the Buck”.