On the afternoon of August 15 fire broke out at the Coimbatore Corporation’s dump yard in Vellalore. What started as a spark in the accumulated waste section in the area under the control of the Coimbatore Integrated Waste Management Company Limited (CIWMCL), quickly spread to the mixed waste spread over 10 acres.
The Coimbatore Corporation officials, Fire and Rescue Services personnel and others had a tough time putting out the fire. Five fire tenders and 11 water tankers were engaged in the fire-fighting operation that lasted hours.
The Corporation could have put out the fire much earlier than estimated had it had adequate bore wells and that too with water in the Vellalore yard, said sources engaged in the operation. On the 654-acre Vellalore yard, the Corporation has six bore wells.
Two of those were within the area managed by the CIWMCL, which manages 450-500 tonnes waste a day. Three bore wells were in the yard and the sixth was within the vermicompost plant. Of the three bore wells, two were pretty far off and in the remaining four, the Corporation could barely get the water it needed on the day.
The sources said that though the bore wells were 900 – 1,000 ft deep, the dip in water level ensured that the Corporation could not get adequate water.
With the result, the water tankers engaged in the operation had to make trips to the water tank in Mettur, south of the Vellalore yard, to keep the fire-fighting operation going.
To avoid facing such a situation in the future, the Corporation had planned to increase the bore wells in the Vellalore dump yard, the sources said.
A senior officer said that alternatively, the Corporation had also planned to tap the treated water flowing out of the sewage treatment plant in Ukkadam into the oxidation plant in Vellalore.
A minimum intervention was required and the Corporation had submitted a proposal for taking up the work.
Likewise, the Corporation would also install 60 closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) as the existing ones were inadequate to cover the entire yard.
Meanwhile, the CIWMCL had said that it had asked the Coimbatore Corporation to move out the waste where the fire broke out because it was the waste that Corporation had dumped in excess of its handling capacity for over four years.
A rough estimate from the company said that the waste could be nearly four lakh tonnes and was spread over 10 acre.
