Kuwaiti citizens deal with effects of fires in world’s largest tyre graveyard
Shocking images of a fire burning across a landfill filled with old tyres circulated widely on social media in late July. The tyre-dumping site, located about a dozen kilometres from the capital of Kuwait, is the largest in the world, with more than 50 million tyres buried in the desert area. While this viral video was actually filmed in April, it does show a serious environmental problem that has been impacting the small Gulf country.
Satellites images captured a huge cloud of black smoke coming from a massive fire in the Salmi landfill, known as the “tyre graveyard”, located in Kuwait’s Jahra district. This video, which is just over a minute long, garnered more than three million views on Twitter after it was posted without any context on July 29. It shows discarded tyres as far as the eye can see.
When and where was this video filmed?
Our team used the Invid WeVerify tool to look into the video (click here to find out how). We found a few older posts of the same event on Twitter, posted on April 29 and 30, 2021, as well as a Tweet with screengrabs of the viral video posted by a member of Kuwait’s Municipal Council, Ahmad Al Hadian.
According to Kuwaiti media, a fire broke out on April 29 in the tyre graveyard. Firefighters, who managed to put out the flames after seven hours, said that there were no victims but that the fire was a case of arson. They provided no information about the investigation into the possible perpetrator.
Why does this little country have so many used tyres?
It turns out the viral video is from a few months back. But fires often break out in this landfill, which extends over 3 km² and is considered the world’s largest tyre graveyard. There are around 60 million used tyres in the landfill alone, according to environmental officials – tyres that will eventually be buried in the large pits you can see in these satellite images.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Kuwait made a business importing used tyres from other countries, importing 259 million used tyres per year from the United States and Europe, until the practice was banned in 2001.
The fire on April 29 isn’t the first that’s taken place at the Salmi landfill. In 2021 alone, authorities reported three different fires in Salmi: one on February 13, a second on March 30 and the third on April 29. Preliminary investigations concluded that all three fires were criminal in nature after finding traces of combustible liquids at the site. In 2012, a fire burned for three days in a tyre dump site in neighbouring Arhayyah, located 8 km from Jahra. After the incident, the contents of the dumping grounds were moved to Salmi, and the site closed definitively in 2016.
These tyre graveyards contain thousands of tonnes of rubber, which sits exposed to the burning sun, thus releasing carcinogenic gas harmful for humans and the environment. Dioxins are released into the atmosphere when synthetic rubber combusts, even at low temperatures.
Fatma Al Zalzalah is a 24-year-old engineer from Kuwait, who launched an environmental initiative called “Eco star” in 2019, to help promote better recycling of waste.
‘This fire releases carbon black, which is an invisible killer’
‘We need a long term strategy, we can’t just rely on landfills as a rapid solution’
In March, Kuwait City officials revealed that the capital’s landfill sites receive 7,000 tons of waste daily. The city has plans to export 5 million tyres before the end of the year, but says that “efforts have been made to transport the tyres, but the city has limited resources faced with the large number of tyres and waste”.
News Source: The Observers/Yahoo News
