Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic said on Monday that the disposal of waste at the city's Jakusevec landfill, where a garbage landslide happened earlier in the day, has been suspended, calling for an urgent meeting with the government to finally close the landfill.

The mayor noted that the air quality measuring stations at Jakusevec do not show exceedances of limit values.

Speaking to the press at Jakusevec after visiting the site of the accident, Tomasevic said that three persons were injured in the latest garbage landslide, which happened around 7 a.m. on Monday.

“Three workers have been hospitalised, including one with more serious injuries, and we are waiting for information on his condition. I express my regret over the accident,” the mayor said, noting that it was still being investigated how the garbage landslide happened and how it was related to the landslide of three weeks ago.

“The inspection teams are on the ground, both environmental and construction inspectors, who are working to determine what happened and I am waiting for their findings,” he said.

In addition to investigations conducted by the inspection teams and the police, the city administration will carry out an independent investigation, he said.

“We have hired an independent expert to determine how this happened and so that it does not happen again,” he said.

For the time being the air quality measuring stations at Jakusevec do not indicate any exceedances of limit values, either for hydrogen sulphide or for methane, the mayor said.

The city has commissioned additional mobile air quality monitoring by the landfill and experts of the Andrija Stampar Public Health Teaching Institute will soon arrive at the site with a mobile monitoring system the kind of which was used in a recent fire at the plastics recycling factory Drava International in Osijek, Tomasevic said.

“I am asking for an urgent meeting with the government to determine what should be done to finally close the landfill,” Tomasevic said, recalling that promises in that regard have been made for the past 20 years.

“We are doing our best to have the landfill closed as soon as possible. But that is not only the city’s responsibility, the state is equally responsible,” the mayor said, calling for finding a solution together to close down the landfill and open a new waste management centre in Resnik outside Zagreb.

He said that the daily disposal of waste has been suspended and “the situation will be as the competent state institutions, which need to establish what should be done next, decide.”

“It is up to them to say what should be done and where waste can be disposed of, that is absolutely within the remit of the competent state institution. We will act in line with instructions by the competent state institutions,” the mayor said.

Asked if he felt responsible for the situation, Tomasevic said that responsibility has to be ascertained, “and once it is ascertained, there will be sanctions.”

“If the city sanitation company is found to be responsible, if private firms are found to be responsible, if the responsibility of the designer, supervisor or contractor is determined, there will be sanctions,” he said.

If there were any omissions regarding worker safety, there will be consequences as well, he said.

The city authorities have talked to the State Inspectorate and there are no findings yet that would indicate any irregularities with regard to the management of the landfill and waste disposal, Tomasevic said.

Some inquiries are still under way, we are awaiting the findings of some analyses and more will be known once they are finished, when the State Inspectorate will present the new findings, the mayor said, adding that accidents like the latest ones must not happen again.