Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/KERALA: In Kochi, a city in southern India, firefighters worked hard on Tuesday to stop the spread of hazardous fumes after a dump caught fire five days ago, engulfing the area in a dense haze and suffocating locals.
The high Brahmapuram dump in Kerala state is India’s most recent garbage pile to catch fire, contributing to the country’s increasing pollution caused by deadly heat and methane emissions.
Officials asked more than 600,000-person metropolis residents to stay indoors or wear N95 face masks if they venture out. According to officials, Monday’s school closure was necessitated by the pollution. The fire department in Kerala said the fire started on Thursday.
There is no known reason for landfill fires, but flammable gases from decomposing waste can do so. Officially released photos and videos showed firefighters running to put out the raging fires that sent thick clouds of hazardous smoke soaring far into the sky.
While the fire has been put out, a thick cloud of smoke and methane gas continues to hover over the area, reducing visibility and the city’s air quality and emitting a lingering, pungent odour. Some firefighters had fainted from the smoke, the fire department said. The top court in Kerala said it would hear the matter on Tuesday.
According to GHGSat, which uses satellites to track emissions, India produces more methane from garbage sites than any other nation. Methane is the second most common greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, but it significantly impacts the climate issue because it absorbs more heat.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that as part of his “clean India” project, efforts were being made to clear these waste mountains and turn them into green spaces. If that objective is accomplished, it might help the globe reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and ease some of the misery of the people who live next to these massive dump sites.
India intends to reduce its methane production but has yet to join the 150 other countries committed to the “global methane pledge”, which calls for a reduction in worldwide emissions of at least 30% from 2020 by 2030.
According to scientists, the reduction might prevent an increase in global temperature of 0.2%, enabling the world to meet its goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
India claims it won’t sign up since landfills account for less than 15% of global methane emissions, but farmland and livestock account for 74% of global emissions.
India’s trash mountains
Brahmapuram is only one of about 3,000 landfills in India that are bursting at the seams with decomposing trash and spewing out hazardous gases. In a 2020 report from the International Urban Cooperation, a program of the European Union, the landfill, commissioned in 2008, covers 16 acres.
The study added that the landfill receives about 100 metric tons of plastic waste each day, of which only about 1% is suitable for recycling. The study said the remaining 99% is dumped as a heap at the site, calling it a “menace for the municipal corporation.”
“The plastic dump at Brahmapuram is constantly growing,” it claimed. The air and atmosphere have been contaminated by the numerous fires that have occurred there in recent years. Despite its expanding size and hazards, the landfill is not India’s most important natural resource. The top rank is the Deonar dumping site in Mumbai, a coastal city in western India, about 18 floors high.
Deonar has also had intermittent fire outbreaks that have engulfed roughly a million people in the surrounding suburbs of Chembur, Govandi, and Mankhurd.
As the country is expected soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, climate experts fear the time to act upon the issue is running out.
