The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

PRIME Minister Perry Christie said that the fire at the New Providence Landfill is “very close“ to being extinguished, and that consultants flown in from the United States by the government are now at the site.

He stressed that the full management of the site by a Bahamian group will also require the coming on board of a US operator to help manage the city dump.

“As of this morning (Thursday), I am told that they are very close to putting the fire out, and there has been a significant improvement in terms of the smoke,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Grand Bahama Business Outlook yesterday in Freeport.

“We have also flown in consultants from the US who are (at) the site with us.”

Mr Christie said the priority now is to move rapidly to bring normalcy to the site and to move quickly with respect to determining which of the groups who have applied to manage the site will, in fact, be selected.

Residents of Jubilee Gardens were forced to evacuate their homes on Sunday when hazardous smoke from the landfill blanketed the community.

Mr Christie stated that proper future management of the landfill site is of utmost importance to the government.

He stressed that the government wants an operator who has an enormous capacity to manage such a site.

“For me, right now I want to in the shortest possible time to have a full management team on the condition that the management team may be made up of Bahamians, but they have in their mix someone who operates those industrial sites now in the USA,” he said.

“Happily, for us the fire was not started on the site itself, it came from some bush fire that ignited and we had a huge amount of waste stored there from the hurricane. We had a compactor there (for the debris),” said Mr Christie.

The nation’s leader assured Bahamians that the government will assist residents in restoring their homes.

“If, for example, they had smoke damage we are going to restore that. If their walls are dirty because of smoke, we will fix that. In other words, we will go into the community with a view to determining how they were impacted and how best we can put them back in the position they were in, or even a little better than they were in,” he said.

Mr Christie said that the fire did not destroy any homes.

“We will be painting, fumigating, and industrial cleaning because no houses were destroyed by the fire,” he added.