Angel Valdes | February 14, 2023
Major Angel Delgado of the Panama Fire Department gave details on Radio Panama about the work to control the fire at the Cerro Patacón landfill where a huge column of smoke has been created that has spread to some parts of the capital city.
“Yesterday we had a firefighter who had some injuries as a result of a fall and he is out of danger and today the work will be focused primarily on continuing to prevent the spread, the other thing is to remove with mechanical shovels, machinery, cool with concentrates of foam and water and burying from there the number of dump trucks that are entering Cerro Patacón, we are also receiving the support of IDAAN that has provided us with large capacity tanker vehicles to guarantee the water supply inside Cerro Patacón”, Delgado said.
To extinguish this fire will take several days due to the place where there is a lot of debris “We hope to advance during the morning so that when the temperatures rise and the breeze begins to blow we have a significant advance in the operations of control and extinction of this fire which obviously is going to take us a couple of days due to the large amount of waste that is on fire at the moment,” explained Delgado.
On how to avoid this type of situation, Mayor Delgado expressed concern about the number of fires that are taking place “We are calling for a campaign so that they do not burn grasslands, yesterday we had all the stations in the city capital in response to plant mass fires, plus Cerro Patacón and at that time structural fire alarms were given as in Calidonia, Juan Díaz and Pacora and this may affect the response times of our institution to control a fire and rescue of people”.
