SWIFT ACTION by a team from Sustainable Barbados Recycling Centre Inc (SBRC) and the Barbados Fire Service averted a major blaze at the Mangrove Landfill, St Thomas, last Saturday evening.
The SBRC team, from the plant at nearby Vaucluse, mobilised bulldozers, three loaders, an excavator belonging to C. O. Williams Construction, and one small loader from the Sanitation Service Authority (SSA), together with 12 large dump trucks, to move over 100 tons of soil from SBRC to smother the fire which started in Cell 4 at the landfill.
The teams worked flat out for about five hours to finally extinguish the blaze that if not extinguished quickly would have resulted in serious air pollution downwind, and probably would have led to the evacuation of homes and hotels on the West Coast.
This makes the fifth serious fire that the Williams teams have mobilised to rush to the aid of the SSA to extinguish fires by smothering them with soil from SBRC.
“It is dangerous work that the Williams teams undertake fearlessly because they are committed to doing everything in their power to keep Barbados pristine,” said Ralph “Bizzy” Williams, the chairman of Williams Industries, last night.
He praised the efforts of the SBRC team, saying “if there was one outstanding hero on each occasion it was Philip Atwell, alias “Red Ants”. (SP)
