The minister promised that ecological disasters will be more frequent – Respublika.lt

“Not so long ago, there was a large-scale ecological disaster in Alytus, when the warehouses of the tire processing company burned and caused great damage to people and nature. Here, last evening, perhaps a slightly smaller disaster occurred in Vilnius. Both there were right next to residential houses and here. I would even say that a car dump caught fire very close to the city center. Thanks to the professionally acting firefighters and other services, which, I would say, quickly brought the situation under control and by today’s morning, at least, the fire is no longer on a huge scale.

But the question is: how do such companies find a location so close to residential areas and close to the city center? Why are such companies allowed to engage in such polluting, potentially polluting activities? In the event of such an accident, when a fire starts, how many schools in the city of Vilnius are closed today? And those, I would say, even remote schools in Karoliniškės do not work, everything works remotely, because the consequences of pollution are feared,” parliamentarian Julius Sabatauskas asked Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė on Thursday.

“I want to point out that after several incidents that have occurred, including in Alytus, the Ministry of the Interior initiated that the Department of Fire Protection and Rescue conduct intensive planned and unplanned inspections in precisely such dangerous objects, to assess possible risks. Because we can see that it can have very serious consequences. This is done constantly, we are really closely monitoring the situation with the Ministry of Environmental Protection and its subordinate institutions. We are also now working on some changes that would allow for even stricter regulation of such facilities.

I want to emphasize, these are more, I would say, environmental issues, but if you ask my opinion about such objects and their presence in cities, city centers, then of course I think that this is a very big source of danger. Apparently, decisions should be made in such a way that such objects should not be near residential houses, and the decision-makers should do so,” said A. Bilotaitė.

Minister of Environment S. Gentvilas also asked to speak.

“Dear Julius, fires are breaking out every day and they are getting more and more fatal. There have been many fires and deaths over three days last week, but the headlines are truly lost. This particular fire is causing a stir due to the fact that more pollution is released into the sky, but no people were injured, and the services responded extremely promptly. Probably, the municipality, the Public Health Center, the firefighters, the rescuers, and the information service all worked flawlessly. Here are the consequences, but please do not immediately judge the system because the circumstances of the event are not yet clear today. That is one thing.

The second thing: Vilnius has an industrial area in the center of the city. This is the railway station block. The conversion vision has been in the making for five years, but it still hasn’t been implemented. There are locomotive depots there. You will drive along Panerių Street, you will see piles of coal in the center of Vilnius city, you will see car scrap yards. We need the impetus of Vilnius railways and the Vilnius municipality so that the industrial areas are actually moved out”, S. Gentvilas taught.

According to him, the standards for such waste management companies are constantly getting stricter.

“It’s getting tougher because lithium batteries (whether it’s e-cigarettes or mobile phones) will make fires in the waste management sector more intense, because there’s simply self-igniting material. There will be fires, the only question is how we will control them quickly”, said S. Gentvilas.

Seimūn T. Tomilin did not like the minister’s answer “that fires are breaking out”.

“I’ll just say that last year, when there was a huge fire in Gariūnai, at the waste company, I really considered it a tragedy and I didn’t even publicly raise any questions to the minister. But when a huge fire breaks out for the second time in less than 8 months in a waste company operating directly in the center of Vilnius, the systemic question arises whether we have done everything, whether you have done everything, so that after that huge fire there would be more inspections, perhaps stricter conditions for waste handlers ? Were there organized raids and the like? What exactly did you do after that fire?” asked T. Tomilinas.

“First of all, the owner and the operator are responsible. You should always ask why the fire happened, was it the owner’s fault or not the owner’s fault? After that, were the state standards sufficient?

Now about state standards. The right question is, do we have enough of them? Neither according to the environmental parameters nor according to the fire prevention parameters, this company was not dangerous. It had no explosives, it had no hazardous waste, it does not have and does not qualify as a company that must have sanitary protection zones. It operates in an industrial area, yes, it is downtown. Neither PAGD nor the Department of Environmental Protection classified it as dangerous. Inspections that have been held since 2015 have not shown any violations by the company. The last survey was conducted in October 2022. He didn’t show either. The next one was supposed to be in 2025.

But now you ask how it should be tightened and what has been done after Ecoservico. It has been done. Dear colleague Agne mentioned our joint work. Since there is a greater risk in the waste management sector, now a new fire standard for waste management will soon be approved. Waste management heaps cannot be larger than 600 square meters. And the total pile of yesterday’s fire was 2 thousand square meters. It must not be higher than 5 meters. At least one third of the territory must be free to push out the waste. These standards come into force. That transition period to adapt – a year .And they come into force in 2025 in the waste management sector.

Yes, it is being tightened. Naturally, such companies will be pushed out of the city centers because they will have to have higher standards, wider territories and so on. And the investigation will show who is really to blame. It seems to me that it is too early to blame the politicians for setting too low a standard,” S. Gentvilas taught.