Kalain Ho­sein

Thick, black smoke bil­lowed high in­to the skies across Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, as thou­sands of gal­lons of fu­el burnt in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly fol­low­ing an ex­plo­sion at Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um’s Sea Lots com­pound.

Three peo­ple, said to be con­trac­tors per­form­ing main­te­nance work on the com­pound at the time, were in­jured in the blast and were quick­ly whisked away from the scene for emer­gency med­ical care.

One con­trac­tor sus­tained burns to the fore­arm and thighs, while an­oth­er ex­pe­ri­enced in­tense heat to the head but es­caped burns. The third con­trac­tor was found sev­er­al mo­ments af­ter his col­leagues, re­port­ed­ly trau­ma­tised from the event. All the men were tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for treat­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to NP, the ex­plo­sion took place at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12.45 pm on the south­ern side of the Tank Farm area of its com­pound.

Shock­waves from the ex­plo­sion sent near­by em­ploy­ees scam­per­ing for safe­ty.

Po­lice and fire of­fi­cials were quick to re­spond.

Lat­er on, em­ploy­ees were seen run­ning across the Beetham High­way un­der po­lice watch be­fore as­sem­bling in a muster point area just east of the Port-of-Spain Mar­ket. Still ad­her­ing to COVID-19 pro­to­cols, all were masked and most so­cial­ly dis­tanced. How­ev­er, they were all re­count­ing their ex­pe­ri­ences over their phones. Most said they felt the build­ing shake, then heard the loud ex­plo­sion.

Fire officers extinguish a blaze on NP compound after a storage tank exploded yesterday.

Kerwin Pierre

Smoke from the site was seen bil­low­ing in­to the sky from miles away. Many peo­ple took videos and post­ed them on so­cial me­dia. Some peo­ple clos­er to the ac­tion even stopped on the near­by Port-of-Spain over­pass and oth­er ar­eas and took im­ages and video.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith al­so vis­it­ed the site and over­saw po­lice and emer­gency op­er­a­tions. The Com­mis­sion­er or­dered the Beetham High­way closed just af­ter the ex­plo­sion. East­bound traf­fic was di­vert­ed to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route through Abat­toir Road, Sea Lots, while west­bound traf­fic was di­vert­ed from the Mar­itime Fly­over to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route. Grif­fith ex­plained that this was done to en­sure the pub­lic and mo­torists’ safe­ty while fire of­fi­cials were ex­tin­guish­ing the blaze.

With the west­bound lanes closed, emer­gency of­fi­cials were able to re­spond to the fire quick­ly. Fire ten­ders from the Wright­son Road Fire Sta­tion were able to re­spond to the fire with­in eight min­utes. With­in an hour, act­ing Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Mar­lon Smith con­firmed that the fire had been ex­tin­guished. Short­ly be­fore 2 pm, NP em­ploy­ees were al­lowed to re­turn to their of­fices, al­beit a bit shell­shocked. A heavy po­lice pres­ence re­mained on-site in­to the late af­ter­noon.

In a state­ment af­ter­ward, NP con­firmed the ex­plo­sion oc­curred while con­trac­tors were con­duct­ing a re­pair ex­er­cise. (See full state­ment be­low)

Al­so com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan said, “Tank four, which stores around 10,000 bar­rels of su­per gaso­line, was be­ing pumped out. That process had vir­tu­al­ly fin­ished, so the tank was large­ly emp­ty, but some­how it ig­nit­ed.”

What caused the fire?

While in­ves­ti­ga­tions are still on­go­ing, NP con­firmed that the ex­plo­sion oc­curred while a con­trac­tor was on site. Fol­low­ing is the state­ment the com­pa­ny sent on the in­ci­dent:

NP can con­firm that at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12.54 pm to­day, Fri­day 11th De­cem­ber 2020, an ex­plo­sion oc­curred on the south­ern side of the Tank Farm area of NP’s Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, Head Of­fice.

At this time, we can con­firm that an ex­plo­sion took place while a con­trac­tor was on site ex­tract­ing resid­ual prod­uct from a stor­age tank as part of a rou­tine re­pair ex­er­cise at the NP, PoS fa­cil­i­ty. We can con­firm that there are no ca­su­al­ties at this time and that two per­sons who were af­fect­ed by the ex­plo­sion, have been tak­en to the hos­pi­tal to re­ceive emer­gency care.

In keep­ing with es­tab­lished HSSE pro­ce­dur­al guide­lines, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vices were im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed and fire ten­ders from the Wright­son Road, di­vi­sion were im­me­di­ate­ly dis­patched to the scene. With a com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse from the T&T Fire Ser­vices and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, NP can pro­vide as­sur­ance that the sit­u­a­tion is ful­ly un­der con­trol as the fire is now con­tained.

NP em­ploys a ro­bust main­te­nance sys­tem, and we are work­ing to de­ter­mine the cause of the in­ci­dent as we re­main in con­tact with au­thor­i­ties at the scene. The safe­ty of our em­ploy­ees and the com­mu­ni­ties in which NP op­er­ates re­mains the Com­pa­ny’s top pri­or­i­ty at this point and we will be pro­vid­ing fur­ther up­dates as they be­come avail­able.

NP wish­es to as­sure the pub­lic that our op­er­a­tions re­main un­af­fect­ed and that we con­tin­ue to sup­ply the coun­try with a con­tin­u­ous and re­li­able sup­ply of fu­el.