WESTMORELAND, Jamaica – The resort town of Negril has been blanketed by a cloud of smoke for the past several days as it braves yet another Morass fire, but hoteliers and other stakeholders say they are at their wits’ end as the impact is affecting tourists and residents alike.

Their cries are getting louder as they try to mitigate the impacts of climate change on the tourist hotspot, and hope the relevant authorities will act quickly.

”You’re driving through a tunnel of smoke, it is right there by the bigger hotels. It is affecting everybody. People are paying big bucks to go and stay in these hotels, they can’t use the beach, they can’t walk; and they can’t swim as the sea is still very rough, now they can’t walk the road. They have to lock up in the room, they can’t even open their window,” President of the Negril Chamber of Commerce (NCC) Elaine Allen-Bradley argued.

Allen-Bradley painted a grim picture of the situation in Negril: “The smoke is terrible, the smell is horrendous, there is soot blowing everywhere. So do they [the tourists] spend money to stay in their rooms?

“It is going to get worse if we don’t do something, and do it now!” Bradley- Allen pleaded.

The town is no stranger to fires of this kind, and funds have been allocated in the past to wet the Negril Great Morass.

“It’s not a strange event, the morass has been catching fire ever since I have lived 23 years now in Negril. We have all always tried to mitigate this and we ask our environmental team from the chamber to ask that something be done in resetting the morass.

”We have talked and talked and all we hear is talk and no action. Now, we are getting damage to people’s property. This can be mitigated and it is not going to get less, it is going to get worse, because climate change is here!” Allen-Bradley said.

Also reeling from the impact of the fire is hotelier Richard Wallace, who told Observer Online he had to issue masks to his staff on Thursday.

The Negril Great Morass on Fire on Thursday.

“What this tells us is that climate change is real and these are the effects of climate change that we are feeling,” Wallace, managing director of Boardwalk Village in Negril, theorised.

Wallace said Thursday’s fire is the worst he has seen in a while.

“This one appears to be worse than usual but it’s something that we’re gonna have to plan for and take seriously going forward,” Wallace said in reference to climate change.

Meanwhile, Sophie Grizzle Roumel, an environmentalist who sits on the NCC, said the government had received funding to wet the morass.

A Water truck outside the Kool Runnings Water Park in Negril, after it caught fire on Thursday as the morass went up in flames.

“The government of Jamaica got funding from UNEP to rewet the morass through a project called iWeco. This project was supposed to be done by NEPA, and after many extensions we were informed that it was going to end in December of last year. We have written to NEPA three times requesting some kind of closure. Absolutely nothing on the ground has been done.

“We would like to know where we go from here. This issue has been going on for 40 years. It is not yesterday. We have a lot of fancy reports, but what we really need is to have work done on the ground and that is not happening,” she said.

Grizzle said guests at the resort she works have been complaining of ash falling on them coupled with breathing issues.

A multi-million US dollar project was started in December 2016 with funding from the Global Environment Facility and is managed by the National Environment and Planning Agency. However, the project is yet to be completed.

The Integrating Water, Land and Ecosystems Management in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (IWEco Project) aims at restoring the historical hydrological and other physical processes in the Negril Great Morass.