Efforts to extinguish a fire at a processing centre in Vasilikos continued on Monday as surrounding communities staged a protest to express their displeasure over the incident.
The fire broke out on Saturday afternoon in an open area filled with old tyres between the villages of Kalavasos and Mari, and was brought under control before midnight.
It took eight fire engines and a team of 25 firefighters working around the clock to bring the fire under control.
An update on Monday morning said that two fire engines would remain at the scene, with a new team sent to monitor the fire, which was still not completely out due to the highly flammable nature of the tyres.
The director of the environment department, Costas Hadjipanayiotou, who was at the scene on Saturday afternoon said it appeared the fire was caused by a malfunction in a tyre shredder that ignited the spark that led to the blaze.
Hadjipanayiotou said the tyres were there in accordance with the required permits.
HTTPS:/CYPRUS-MAIL.COM/WP-CONTENT/UPLOADS/2022/06/DOC.20220613.3423644.IMAGE1_.JPG
Meanwhile, local residents gathered at the old Vasilikos quarry around 9 on Monday morning to protest the incident, using it to illustrate their enduring opposition to the relocation of even more heavy industrial plants in the area.
Dozens of people living in Mari, Kalavasos, Zygi, Maroni, Tochni, Choirokitia, Asgata, Pentakomo and Psematismenos attended the protest.
Many held signs reading “No more pollution in our communities”, “Respect our children’s health” and “No more factories in our area”.
Speaking to the media, residents asked for measures to be taken in order to avoid similar fires in the future, saying that the most recent one will undoubtedly have unprecedented health repercussions for them and their children after they inhaled its toxic fumes.
The previous day, chairman of the coordinating committee of the local communities, and Mayor of Kalavasos, Lefteris Fokas said residents had had a difficult night and it was still considered hazardous to go outside. He said homes were filled with ashes and other pollutants from the fire.
“Until late last night, we prepared teams in case we needed to evacuate the communities, according to the instructions we had from the civil defence. In the end, it did not happen, but the situation today, despite the fact that the fire is coming to an end because the winds are not blowing as much the smoke had already spread to Kalavasos and it is suffocating,” he said.
Fokas repeated that they would never accept the relocation of the Dhali asphalt plan to their areas.
Only last year, the audit office revealed that a company being paid to process massive quantities of used car tyres for Vasilikos was failing to do so.
In a tweet on Saturday, the audit office said it had pointed out the risk of fire from the accumulation of large quantities of tyres in that very area “at a time when some people collect fees to process the tyres”. There had been another fire involving tyres in the same area in the past, the tweet said.
In its report last year, the audit office said that used car tyres located near the Vassiliko cement works plant, close to Mari, had not been processed, despite a company being paid to do so. These tyres had also been included in the quantities Cyprus put in its report to the European Commission as having been processed, the audit office said.
Vassiliko cement works plant is the main management and processing unit for used tyres and it uses these tyres as a source of energy for its operational needs.
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Mail
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Mail
Source
