JEDDAH, 4 November 2007 — The Civil Defense, with the help of the Jeddah Municipality, finally extinguished a huge fire yesterday that broke out on Friday around noon time at the city’s garbage dump located in Al-Ajwad to the east of the Briman district.
Residents of Briman protested on Friday evening by blocking municipality and Civil Defense vehicles. “People were angry because they were affected by the smoke that was coming from the dump,” Khaled Aqil, deputy mayor for services, told a press conference yesterday.
Aqil said that the police managed to calm down angry mobs and allowed Civil Defense units to enter and take control of the blaze, which continued until yesterday afternoon.
“The smoke from the fire caused many residents from the Al-Samir and East Briman areas to evacuate their homes. The strong wind helped in sending smoke to the eastern and central parts of Jeddah,” he said.
Aqil said the fires started in four different locations simultaneously. Investigations are under way to determine how the fires started.
The deputy mayor noted that many illegal expatriates, who reside in the dump, are known to burn tires and electric wires. “We don’t accuse anyone but there are more than 1,000 illegal expatriates living in the dump, who, despite monitoring from the municipality, use the site to burn garbage to retrieve recyclable metals,” he said.
He added that the municipality assigned 35 field inspectors at the site in early September. “Since then there have been no reports of fires except for the one that broke out yesterday (Friday). Inspectors and security guards were assigned to the site on Friday because many residents close by were continuously complaining about fires and subsequent smoke,” said Aqil.
“We can’t promise that another fire will not break out, but we promise to intensify our monitoring until the new dump begins to operate in three months’ time,” he said.
The new SR30 million city dump, located 12 kilometers east to the existing one, covers an area of 4.5 million square kilometers and is surrounded by a nine kilometer-long concrete fence with three main gates.
“It would be hard for any illegal resident to enter the new dump. The current 3.5 million square meter dump is to be turned into a huge park that would serve as a major public entertainment facility for the residents of Jeddah,” he said.
