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Thursday, July 17, 2025

57 residents evacuated after oil spill in Marabella

by

18 days ago
20250629

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A strong hy­dro­car­bon odour on Fri­day af­ter­noon was the first sign that some­thing was wrong in Bayshore, Mara­bel­la.

With­in hours, 57 res­i­dents — in­clud­ing ba­bies — were forced to evac­u­ate their homes for their safe­ty af­ter a rup­tured Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um line caused an oil spill in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Na­tal­ie Mo­hammed, one of the af­fect­ed res­i­dents, yes­ter­day de­scribed it as a hor­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, es­pe­cial­ly for fam­i­lies with young chil­dren.

“It was a hor­ri­fy­ing sit­u­a­tion. No, I did not have to evac­u­ate but my niece had to leave with her two ba­bies — one is nine months old, and the oth­er is two years,” she said.

The res­i­dents were tak­en to the Roy­al Ho­tel for tem­po­rary ac­com­mo­da­tion.

How­ev­er, Ali Mo­hammed said while the ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion was de­cent, he and his wife would not be re­turn­ing af­ter be­ing told they would on­ly re­ceive break­fast.

Fish­er­men were al­so wor­ried about their liveli­hoods.

“We can’t go out with that oil line. The boat gets messed up and you can’t catch fish — you have to throw it away,” said fish­er­man Satro­han Pul­chan.

Sev­er­al res­i­dents told Guardian Me­dia that they were hap­py with the prompt re­sponse by the au­thor­i­ties.

An am­bu­lance with a doc­tor was on site to ex­am­ine and treat res­i­dents who felt ill.

Mean­while, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um yes­ter­day con­firmed that the leak came from a rup­tured 12-inch trunk pipeline along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way near Tarou­ba on Fri­day morn­ing.

While the leak has since been clamped, gal­lons of oil seeped in­to the riv­er course, but the com­pa­ny said con­tain­ment booms were de­ployed and there is no sign of oil af­fect­ing the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment. As a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, how­ev­er, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that com­mu­ni­ty is­sues con­tin­ue to be as­sessed and ad­dressed.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who vis­it­ed the af­fect­ed area yes­ter­day, told re­porters there were no re­ports of sig­nif­i­cant ill­ness among res­i­dents. He said three main con­trac­tors were on site and they are aim­ing at com­plet­ing the clean-up ex­er­cise by to­mor­row, once the weath­er per­mits.

“The is­sues here in the com­ing days will en­tail a prop­er, com­plete clean-up and look at the dam­age that has been done. Clear­ly, it is a man­grove area so there are is­sues with fish­eries and liveli­hoods and so on and al­so is­sues with the en­vi­ron­ment,” Mooni­lal said.

Mooni­lal iden­ti­fied age­ing in­fra­struc­ture as the cause of the rup­tured line, say­ing that a lot of Her­itage’s in­fra­struc­ture has to be re­placed be­cause “what hap­pened on Fri­day could hap­pen any day again giv­en the in­tegri­ty of the as­sets that on the ground all over the coun­try, not just the Mara­bel­la area.”

Once in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment are is­sued to the new board and chair­man of Her­itage, as well as oth­er en­er­gy com­pa­nies, he said among their pri­or­i­ties will be to im­ple­ment a pro­gramme to as­sess and re­place as­sets.

Mooni­lal said his ad­min­is­tra­tion in­her­it­ed this is­sue and had there been some type of at­tempt to re­place in­fra­struc­ture, this calami­ty could have been avoid­ed.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal said he has asked Min­is­ter Ernesto Ke­sar to take lead on this mat­ter by work­ing with Her­itage to en­sure it comes to a res­o­lu­tion quick­ly with very lit­tle dis­com­fort to res­i­dents.

He said Her­itage has pro­vid­ed se­cu­ri­ty to safe­guard res­i­dents’ prop­er­ties in their ab­sence and as­sured they will ad­dress claims for com­pen­sa­tion.

The min­is­ters and oth­er of­fi­cials al­so met with res­i­dents at the ho­tel. Mean­while, coun­cil­lor John Michael Al­i­bo­cas said 100 food ham­pers will be dis­trib­uted to res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty. Oth­er of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing San Fer­nan­do West MP Dr Michael Dowlath and Clax­ton Bay MP Hansen Nar­i­nesingh, were al­so on-site yes­ter­day speak­ing with res­i­dents and Her­itage of­fi­cials.


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