As Saint Lucia grapples with prolonged dry conditions and tightening water shortages, the Saint Lucia Fire Service has issued an urgent public appeal for heightened caution, calling on residents to immediately halt all unregulated open burning activities that carry severe risks of runaway wildfires.
Owen Cazaubon, a senior official with the fire agency, revealed that the department responded to an alarming 53 separate bush and rubbish fires across the island in just the first month of the current dry season, June. The vast majority of these blazes, he explained, trace back to unauthorised, unsupervised burning carried out by members of the public, a practice that threatens three critical pillars of community well-being: public health, environmental protection, and personal and property safety.
Beyond the immediate risk of spreading flames, Cazaubon emphasised that smoke from unregulated open burning degrades local air quality, triggering significant respiratory complications. These health impacts fall disproportionately on vulnerable groups, including young children, elderly residents, and people living with pre-existing chronic health conditions. Uncontrolled fires also pose a rapidly escalating threat to surrounding ecosystems and infrastructure: even small blazes can spiral out of control in parched, dry vegetation, destroying native plant life, damaging nearby residential and commercial structures, and in the most extreme cases, leading to life-altering injuries or fatalities.
This public warning comes at a time when the island is already facing a second overlapping crisis: depleted freshwater reserves. The Water and Sewerage Company (WASCO) has issued multiple repeated alerts about dropping reservoir levels, urging all residents and businesses to cut back on non-essential water use. Cazaubon clarified that the Saint Lucia Fire Service draws its water for emergency response from the same public network that serves households and commercial operations across the country. Unnecessary, human-caused fires therefore place extra, avoidable strain on the island’s already stretched water supply, exacerbating shortages for all community members.
Fire service leaders acknowledge that many residents rely on burning as a method to clear agricultural land or dispose of accumulated waste, but are strongly urging the public to pause this practice for the duration of the dry season and explore safer alternative disposal and land-clearing methods. The agency also reminded residents that unauthorised burning violates existing Saint Lucian law: under Sections 449 to 452 of the island’s Criminal Code, igniting or maintaining a fire on bush, grass, rubbish, or any other flammable material without obtaining prior approval from the Fire Service and taking required safety precautions is classified as a criminal offense. Individuals who allow fires that put lives, private property, or the natural environment at risk are eligible for prosecution and can face official legal penalties.
For residents who believe they have a critical need to carry out controlled burning, the fire service has outlined a clear process: anyone planning a burn must first contact their local fire station to request official approval and site-specific safety guidance. Fire service personnel stand ready to assess local weather and vegetation conditions, provide tailored safety recommendations, and oversee approved burns to ensure they remain contained and do not escalate into emergencies.
Cazaubon stressed that collective public cooperation is the single most critical factor in preventing avoidable fires, protecting lives and property, conserving the island’s limited water stores, and keeping all Saint Lucian communities safe through the remainder of the dry season.