Two fires break out in Saida, one in Nabatieh amid heatwave

BEIRUT — A fire broke out at the landfill south of Saida on Monday, L'Orient Today's correspondent in the South reported, amid a heatwave that descended upon Lebanon late last week and is expected to last several more days.

A second large fire also erupted on the outskirts of the town of Moammarieh consuming large swathes of forested area and grasslands southeast of Saida, and another broke out in the Nabatieh district, between Zawtar and Qaaqaaiyet al-Jisr.

in Moammarieh, firefighting teams continue to battle the flames, which remain out of control, in an attempt to prevent them from spreading to nearby olive groves. And the landfill fire in Saida also has yet to be contained. Contacted by L'Orient Today, the Civil Defense said it had no further information about the fires.

Since the heatwave took hold, amid a particularly dry summer following a winter low on rain, Civil Defense firefighting teams have been battling fires across the country, from Akkar in the North, to the Bekaa in the East, to Natabieh and Sour in the South.

Landfill fires in particular are a common occurrence during Lebanon's dry season, and exacerbate the already high levels of air pollution that fill the skies in Lebanon's cities and industrial hubs.

The environmental protection NGO Greenpeace, through Farah al-Hattab, a lawyer and campaign manager for Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa, warned after a wave of landfill fires last years in Lebanon that these dumps are filled with "massive amounts of untreated waste, including organic and plastic materials," which turns into a "smoldering mass that is difficult to extinguish and releases toxic pollutants such as methane, fine particles, dioxins and furans, which pose a serious threat to public health by increasing the risk of respiratory and cancer-related diseases."

Reporting contributed by L'Orient Today's correspondent in the South, Muntasser Abdallah.