Pramod, a resident of a slum next to Bhalaswa, a huge garbage dump in Delhi, has long since gotten used to the stench, the toxic fumes, the extreme heat, and the indifference of the authorities, but he never thought he would be rubbing his shoulders with the Hell caused by this mountain of burning garbage this week. “The fire, a few hundred meters from my house, was so intense I thought it would literally burn our skins,” Pramod, 35, told AFP in a filthy alley near Bhalaswa in North Delhi .
“I’ve seen a lot in my life, but I was terrified of the burning landfill,” he admits. “I’d only seen such fires on the news, on television.” The catastrophe that broke out on Tuesday evening was transforming The horrible 60 meter high mountain of rubbish quickly turned into an inferno, setting the night sky on fire and spewing out terrible black smoke.
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Lalu Mathew, the Deepti Foundation’s project coordinator for the education of neighborhood children, told AFP that her building’s windows had completely melted. Even in normal times, “amounts of pollutants would get into the classrooms,” he explains, “it’s not at all healthy for children to be there.”
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“The government is doing nothing”
Around Bhalaswa live thousands of the poorest of the poor who have fled the rural misery to the big city in search of work. Families make a living by scouring the landfill in hopes of finding items to sell for a modest income. Health problems and accidents are legion. “Almost my whole family has asthma problems or breathing difficulties,” told AFP Zarina Khatun, 31, who works at a school near the landfill, “nothing changes for us”. “Every year this landfill burns and the government doesn’t do anything,” laments Reena, a trader who lives near Bhalaswa.
Three more fires broke out in less than a month at the capital’s largest landfill, Ghazipur, a gigantic mountain of rubbish 65 meters high. According to Pradeep Khandelwal, a former head of Delhi’s waste management department, all of these fires are likely to be caused by record temperatures, currently around 46 degrees Celsius, which are accelerating the decomposition of organic waste.
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“The hot, dry weather creates an excess of methane gas in landfills, which fuels such fires,” he told AFP.
“Not Going Anywhere Else”
Since March, the city has experienced temperatures above seasonal norms. Delhi recorded a high of 40.1 degrees in March, the hottest temperature for that month in the capital since 1946. Scientists say heat waves are becoming more frequent but also more intense due to climate change.
With a population of more than 20 million, Delhi lacks the modern infrastructure to handle the 12,000 tons of waste it produces every day. City planners say Bhalaswa’s situation is symptomatic of problems across India, where the pace of infrastructure development has not kept pace with the cities’ faster pace.
The ambitions and campaign promises of politicians mean nothing to many Indians who are used to seeing none of their fine projects come to fruition, especially in Bhalaswa. “The governments don’t care,” laments Sonu Kumar, 30, an egg seller who sits among cows, pigs and stray dogs near the garbage dump and a sewer full of excrement, “everybody who lives here has nowhere else to go. “