Efforts on to keep Vellalore dump yard safe

Coimbatore: Learning a lesson from the recent fire at Vellalore dump yard, the city corporation is busy gathering the accumulated waste into small heaps, leaving enough space in between, to avoid another big fire in future. Civic body officials said 20% of the job was done so far.
Meanwhile, efforts are still on to put out the fire completely. “Helicopter service was sought from Sulur air force station as we couldn’t prevent fire from spreading the area. When we were about to wind up the operation, we found the waste was still burning at many places. So, we decided to continue the operation,” said a corporation official.

The official said they have put out fire at 80% of areas in the dump yard and it might take them another couple of days to completely douse the flames. The amount of smoke is reduced by 60%, the official said.

Pointing out that the entire area was filled with waste with no space in between, the official said because of this fire tenders could not reach the area where fire occurred. “It is delaying the operation to put out the fire.”

Another corporation official said efforts were now on to make space by gathering waste into small heaps. “Once it is done, it would not just be easy for vehicles to move around, but also the fire would not spread quickly. We are using14 earthmovers to gather waste into small piles and the work would be completed at the earliest.” The dump yard, spread across 650 acres, has about 15 lakh tonnes cubic metre of solid waste.

J Daniel Jesudass, organizer of Vellalore dump yard opposition committee, said if the corporation had done this exercise earlier, the fire would have been prevented. He also called on the officials to take steps to prevent fire incidents at the dump yard. “Unless the corporation take steps to process solid waste, fire accidents cannot be prevented.”

Another expert, meanwhile, posed why there weren’t fire incidents at the sites where solid waste were processed and managed by private companies. “They install a gas chamber to release the methane gas that is produced while processing the waste. No such chamber is used in the yard maintained by the corporation,” he explained

A senior corporation official, meanwhile, said the waste at the dump yard would soon be disposed of through biomining process. “After that, there won’t be any fire incidents at the dump yard.”