The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

JUST over a month ago, our New Providence landfill, aka our national dumpsite, a veritable national monument, caught afire like it never has before.

So intense were the flames, so intense was the smoke, that people living in communities near to the dump, far too near to the dump, had to literally flee for their lives and their health and their safety, while totally in doubt of the safety of their homes. Some even stayed and breathed in toxic fumes out of fear they would return to find they had no home because it went up in flames.

And since that time, our find-a-scapegoat government has decided - and so politely informed us - that it wasn’t just the typical methane gas emissions internal to the landfill causing the reignition, which typically becomes worse in the dry season, that caused this deep, wide torrent of flames that almost incinerated homes and people near to it.

But, they say, the fire at the dump site was more likely the result of some selfish people in the nearby area who were melting wires for copper and inadvertently created a fire that jumped to the nearby wooded area then jumped over to the dump, causing the inferno that kept the landfill content burning for weeks and smoke emanating in every direction, choking New Providence residents throughout the day and at night as they slept. We don’t know, nobody knows, how accurate that story is ... that the fire was caused by would-be copper smelters. No evidence has been provided that that has really been the case.

Still, in the meantime, no all-clear has been provided to the residents of Jubilee Gardens and nearby communities to return to their homes post the March 5 inferno. It has been more than a month since the actual blaze started but it’s almost been a month since the Department of Environmental Health Services (DEHS) was said to have gone into the area of the dump site and residences close to it to conduct an official analysis of the air quality outside and inside the nearby homes.

We have yet to see - or hear - the results of that report. And the reason for this delay, as was provided a couple of weeks ago, was that this official report was still waiting for a signature, one signature, to be added to it, presumably to make it official.

Up to yesterday, there has been no official notice of such a report issued by either the DEHS or the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). So the report in question has still not yet been signed off. What is quite curious about this is that, in addition to the fact that the DEHS has not provided its own report as yet on a month-old national calamity, we are now being told by our Ministry of Environment that representatives of the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) will come to New Providence (or have already arrived in New Providence?) to begin their own independent work (in conjunction with the Ministry of Health, the Water and Sewerage Corporation, DEHS and NEMA) in assessing the air quality at and near to the dump site.

The Ministry of Environment says PAHO will “assess”, “advise” and “report”. It really makes you wonder, does it not - and I always have questions ... you should have them, too - why it is that DEHS cannot release the first report that they have, the one that they produced themselves, based on their own expertise and independent analyses, in spite of any signatures to the report being unavailable weeks ago.

Frankly, if the report was so sensitive that it couldn’t be released without the right names attached to it, maybe it should concern us more. But, in any case, there must have been somebody high-ranking enough who could override the delay and sign the report to make it official, especially in an emergency. That has not been the case, and it is disheartening. This is an urgent situation. This always was an urgent situation. But all so-called experts and emergency service workers seem to have ignored the fact that this is an urgent situation.

Because there’s been no release of an official report, an official all-clear has not been given to residents of Jubilee Gardens and nearby areas to return to their homes. Nevertheless, most of these people have already returned to their homes, because, really, where else are they going to go?

What is especially curious is the fact that PAHO is going to conduct its assessment in the absence of disclosure of the DEHS report. Is the DEHS waiting to corroborate the findings, or to nullify the findings? Is DEHS waiting to polish off its own justifications for the delays in providing its report, by saying it needed someone else to evaluate it? Are the results of the DEHS tests so bad that it cannot release them? Is it waiting for PAHO to evaluate the situation and provide a report that is in conflict with the DEHS report, in the event PAHO’s report looks better?

Is PAHO going to come in long after the fact and do an assessment on an environment that is four weeks post intensity - fire diminished, smoke diminished - to find that the level of contaminants or pollution at the time of PAHO’s testing are nothing like they were when DEHS supposedly made its first evaluations? And if that were the case, DEHS could then say to the residents, and all Bahamians in general, okay, you have the all-clear, residents can officially return to their homes even though they already have, because there’s nothing wrong ... look, PAHO said so, it’s very safe to go back.

At this point, who are we Bahamians supposed to believe? Whose assessment will be more accurate? Who are we supposed to trust to give us the truth? Is this emergency situation going to go the same way the Rubis fuel leak did, where the Black and Veatch report was withheld by the government until long after the leak first occurred, allowing the problem enough time to dissipate on its own?

Because DEHS and NEMA have chosen to not handle this situation with the urgency that they should, they have disrespected the residents who live near the dump site, and they have disrespected Bahamians overall. Again. This incident and its management has once again demonstrated for us Bahamians the lack of care and concern, or even interest, that our government has for/in us, even in the face of an emergency.

If PAHO can come in at all a month later, why couldn’t emergency management officials enlist the help of another organisation, private or public, local or international, to evaluate the situation, and to assess the level of contaminants sooner than now?

Conducting an assessment of air (and water) quality four weeks out from the most intense occurrence of fire and smoke in the area will surely not provide the same results as having done it immediately after the event occurred. And wouldn’t that have made/make the most sense?

No - because we don’t conduct important business in this country with sense. And we don’t react to emergencies with urgency ... to the extent that the public analyst at DEHS keeps telling us these things take time. Emergencies take time then?

That is usually the excuse given by people who can’t handle the job they are given.

In the end, what is NEMA for? What are emergency services in the Bahamas for, if not to provide immediate aid and ongoing support and transparent reporting in an emergency?

The response provided after the worst dump fire we have probably ever seen has been insufficient, unresponsive, void of professional approach, void of urgency and wholly disrespectful.

Bahamians cannot trust their emergency management agency to be there in their time of emergency. Bahamians cannot trust their department of environmental health services to safeguard their environmental health. So why do these entities even exist?

Ask yourself that question before you visit your polling station in a few weeks to vote for your next government, especially since this dump fire problem - let alone the official DEHS report - is unlikely to be resolved before the upcoming general election.

• Comments and responses to nburrows@tribunemedia.net

You can now watch and listen to Nicole Burrows talking through this article and her thoughts on the arrest of Omar Archer, the Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival on-off saga, Toggie and Bobo and political editorials in newspapers on her new PolitiCole TV Facebook page - HERE