Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Of­fi­cials of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre con­duct­ed air qual­i­ty tests in sev­er­al parts of Cen­tral Trinidad last night, af­ter dozens of res­i­dents re­port­ed nau­se­at­ing gas fumes.Res­i­dents of Cal­i­for­nia, Cam­p­den and Macaulay said the fumes got worse af­ter 6 pm.Cou­va res­i­dent El­liot Thomas said the scent first start­ed around 4 pm and con­tin­ued in­to late evening."Many res­i­dents, even those from Low­er Cam­p­den, re­port­ed smelling the fumes," Thomas said.

He ex­plained that the area close to the Cou­va Healthy Cen­tre was bad­ly af­fect­ed and some peo­ple were even scared to light their stoves for fear of pos­si­ble fires."Right now we do not know where the fumes are com­ing from, but there is an NGC boost­er sta­tion close by so peo­ple are spec­u­lat­ing that there may be a gas leak," he said.A re­port was made to NGC and a spokesper­son said it was aware of the mat­ter.

Con­tact­ed last night, Cou­va MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh said when his con­stituents con­tact­ed him he im­me­di­ate­ly alert­ed the NOC and ODPM di­rec­tor Dr Stephen Ram­roop."We had ex­perts in the field do­ing field test­ing," In­dars­ingh said, adding that spec­u­la­tion was rife that the fumes could have been caused by on­go­ing drag rac­ing on the Cam­p­den strip. How­ev­er, this has not been con­firmed, he said.The NOC last night put the Savonet­ta fire sta­tion on alert dur­ing air test­ing.

A text mes­sage sent to In­dars­ingh from NOC di­rec­tor Garvin Heer­ah, read: "NOC alert­ed the Savonet­ta Fire Sta­tion and co­or­di­nat­ed the re­sponse. A se­ries of air qual­i­ty tests were car­ried out in the vicin­i­ty of the emis­sions and the re­sult is safe. In­ten­si­fi­ca­tion is ir­reg­u­lar.

The Fire Ser­vices is not sat­is­fied that the emis­sions may be due to ni­tron or oth­er fu­els be­ing used in drag rac­ing in Cam­p­den. Fur­ther checks are be­ing con­duct­ed by NGC and of­fi­cers are on the field do­ing air qual­i­ty tests. NOC is con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide sit­u­a­tion­al up­dates." Last No­vem­ber, NGC re­port­ed a leak in its 56-inch cross coun­try pipelines. The leak was sub­se­quent­ly re­paired.