One-week fire at garbage dump site put under control

SAMUT PRAKAN, THAILAND, March 24 (TNA) - Firefighters have already left a garbage dump site in Bangkok's neighbouring Samut Prakan Province after its one-week fire was put under control. Police Colonel Pichai Kriangwattanasiri, Director of Bangkok Fire and Rescue Department (BFRD), under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), told journalists on Monday that a total of 150 firefighters with fire trucks and equipment from 29 fire stations worked on rotation to battle the last burning section of the garbage disposal site near the Bangpu Industrial Estate in Samut Prakan's Praekasa District and they were, finally, able to put the blaze, which broke out on March 16, under control last weekend. Bangkok Governor M.R. Sukhumbhand Paribatra has ordered medical teams to provide medical check-up services to all fire and rescue workers who had worked at the garbage dump site over the past week on March 25. Meanwhile, Caretaker Prime Minister and Defence Minister Yingluck Shinawatra inspected the burned Praekasa garbage dump site on Monday afternoon, instructing concerned agencies to urgently assist affected people, as the number of respiratory patients near the burned dump site has reached over 1,500 so far, including one soldier. Provincial authorities have, thus, sought cooperation from the military to send a group of troops to help ensure public safety in the area and its vicinity, including preventing any feared re-eruption of the fire. The 48-year-old owner of the Praekasa garbage dump site, Krompol Samutsakorn, and his lawyer, in the meantime, met with an investigator of Bang Pu police station to acknowledge his charges for the burned dump site, which has caused toxic haze and smells in the affected areas. (TNA)