Story and photos by Pesi Fonua, Mary Lyn Fonua and Linny Folau.

Tongatapu's rubbish dump, the Tapuhia Landfill at Vaini, erupted into flames, burning furiously and sending a column of smoke towering over Nuku’alofa yesterday, Christmas Day.

Tonga's firefighters today remain challenged by the biggest fire they have ever encountered, already trucking over half a million litres of water to the site, which is still smouldering and emitting toxic fumes.

Deputy Fire Commissioner Sinamoni Kauvaka told Matangi Tonga this morning they are continuing to truck more water to the site.

Since yesterday they have dispatched about 20 firefighters to Tapuhia, assisted by an emergency team of 50 members from the defence services, police, and the National Emergency Management Office (NEMO)

The major fire is believed to have erupted at around 5:00-6:00am on Christmas Day and he said that fire services responded after receiving a report at around 10:00am.

Sinamoni said the security at the site reported that the fire had caused explosions in the waste, because there were some car wrecks which still contained petrol.

"At this point we are trying to extinguish the fire and then the cause will be investigated," he said.

Trucking water

A local water company owned by Makisi Tonga has been supplying most of the water to fight the fire from Nualei assisted by staff of the Waste Authority Ltd., a government enterprise, which runs the dump.

"We have to date received more than 70 truckloads of water from Nualei from Makisi Tonga’s company. One truck holds 10,000 litres of water and the other 5,000 litres, to fill up our two fire trucks, which remain at the site," said Kauvaka who confirmed over half a million litres of water so far had been trucked to the site.

NEMO has assisted by providing an excavator to help move and dismantle the rubbish so they are able to hose down the fumes.

"The flames now are under control but we are trying to extinguish the fumes, which is still ongoing."

Sinamoni anticipated they would not be able to extinguish the fumes today. It's going to be a long day.

"We thought at 6:00am this morning that we can by 6:00pm today but at this stage this is most unlikely and we will have to continue to tomorrow.

Challenge

"The big challenge is the nature of this fire, because it is not an ordinary fire, and we are dealing with layers of different waste at the site.

"The second is our concern of the negative impact this big fire has to the environment. We want to put this out because of the toxic fumes that have come from the plastic, tyres, and metal waste from the site that is being released to the air and atmosphere.

He said it is affecting neighbouring homes in the area.

Sinamoni said they had in the 1980s battled a bush fire at Mataki’eua that took them up to a week to put out but this is bigger.

The huge cloud smoke could be seen from many kilometres offshore all Christmas day.

Workers at the site told Matangi Tonga yesterday they thought the blaze ignited spontaneously,

The fire is deeply embedded in the compacted material of the landfill.

A spokesperson at Tapuhia said that the fire was sparked off deep in the area where perishable trash is buried in layers.

He said that a fire first sparked off last Thursday, December 22, and in order to extinguish it they had to deploy a digger to dig up the layers of rubbish to reach the seat of the fire.

They finally got down to where the fire started from before the weekend and put it out, but then yesterday, Christmas Day, the fire sparked off again in a different area.

The difference this time is that the fire is raging in a different component of the rubbish dump in piles of plastics and metal waste. Among these piles of trash are dumped appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, which are now burning.

Yesterday the spokesman said they were trying to put out the burning perishable rubbish first before they attack the fiercely burning plastic and metal waste. They would then use the fire fighters with their water hoses.

The spokesperson was optimistic that the fire can be extinguished. He said when a fire broke out in the depth of a rubbish dump at the old Popua Rubbish Dump, but they had managed to put it out.

The section of the Tapuhia Landfill that is on fire is Cell No. 2.

The new landfill was part of a $2.7 million pa’anga project, funded by the Australian Government, the Tongan Government and the Asian Development Bank and was handed over nearly two years ago on 13 January 2015.