Four of the five un­der­wa­ter divers sucked in­to a pipe in the Gulf of Paria on Fri­day re­mained trapped up to late yes­ter­day. The div­er who was res­cued re­mained hos­pi­talised but was do­ing okay.

As they prayed for a mir­a­cle, the fam­i­lies of three of the four divers still stuck in the pipe said that the com­pa­ny did noth­ing ur­gent­ly to res­cue them.

Gath­ered in front of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery yes­ter­day morn­ing hop­ing to get an­swers, the rel­a­tives ac­cused Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd of fail­ing the divers. The divers are Kaz­im Ali Jnr; Rishi Nages­sar, 48, of Cou­va; Fyzal Kur­ban, 57, of Clax­ton Bay; and Yusuf Hen­ry, 31, of San­gre Grande. A fifth div­er, Christo­pher Boodram was res­cued and is ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Ali's fa­ther, Kaz­im Ali Snr, who owns the con­tract­ing firm LM­CS Ltd, where the divers were em­ployed, was al­so at the Paria fa­cil­i­ty. He con­firmed that his son was one of the divers. How­ev­er, he did not com­plain.

Kazim Ali Jnr

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 3 pm just off the Pointe-a-Pierre jet­ty. In a re­lease on Fri­day night, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd stat­ed that the five divers em­ployed with LM­CS Ltd were con­duct­ing an un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance ex­er­cise at No 36 Sealine Ris­er on Berth #6 at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed when the in­ci­dent oc­curred and they lost sight of the men who were be­ing mon­i­tored from on­shore.

Paria stat­ed that in­ci­dent man­age­ment pro­to­cols at Paria were im­me­di­ate­ly trig­gered un­der es­tab­lished stan­dards. Paria said they al­so had the sup­port of the T&T Coast Guard. They stat­ed then that the cause of the in­ci­dent was still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

The fam­i­lies com­plained, how­ev­er, that the com­pa­ny failed to con­tact them when the in­ci­dent oc­curred and did not ini­ti­ate im­me­di­ate res­cue op­er­a­tions. The fam­i­lies said were told by friends and as­so­ciates that some­thing went wrong and the men were sucked in­to a 36-inch pipe.

Mean­while, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young met with the com­pa­ny of­fi­cials and the fam­i­lies at the Paria fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, he could not ap­pease the up­set and anx­ious fam­i­lies.

Fyzal Kurban

Fyzal Kurban

Kur­ban's fam­i­ly

Kur­ban's sis­ter-in-law Tr­isha Ra­moutar said Kur­ban's son Michael, a boat cap­tain and div­er, who was work­ing near­by, heard the emer­gency call, left the job site and got to the lo­ca­tion. He told them that no one was search­ing the wa­ter for his fa­ther and the oth­er men.

She said Michael called his oth­er broth­er, a friend and his un­cle, a com­mer­cial div­er and they ar­rived with­in 40 min­utes. They said they heard a noise com­ing from the pipe, but claimed Paria did not want to give the clear­ance for them to go in search of the men.

"Against in­struc­tions, my nephew and they gear up and they went down in the pipe and that is how they save Christo­pher Boodram. They took him out. Michael Kur­ban took Christo­pher out, he start­ed to shout and say, 'Go back for Fyzie, go back for Fyzie, he right be­hind us','" said Ro­moutar.

A distressed Celisha Kurban weeps as she awaits information about her husband, Fyzal Kurban, who was trapped in the pipe.

RISHI RAGOONATH

She said Boodram told them that there was an air pock­et and they were shar­ing oxy­gen tanks. Boodram ex­plained that he and Kur­ban swam out be­cause the rest of them could not make it.

Michael went back in search of his fa­ther but on­ly found his tank and torch­light. He could not go any fur­ther be­cause the length of the rope which was tied to his body had reached its lim­it.

When he came back up, he heard an­oth­er sound com­ing from the pipe. He said they made oth­er at­tempts to find them, but they were un­suc­cess­ful at that time.

Ra­moutar claimed that it was be­tween 4 am to 5 am when the com­pa­ny sent in re­mote tech­nol­o­gy in­to the pipe, but it was blocked.

Distressed family members of trapped diver Yusuf Henry, from left, father Joseph Henry, sister Afeisha Henry sister and mother Nicole Greenidge, await news at the car park of the Pointe-a-Pierre refinery, yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Hen­ry's fam­i­ly

Mean­while, the thought of los­ing a third son in the space of two months was too much for Nicole Greenidge to bear.

Greenidge, the moth­er of Yusuf Hen­ry, lost two oth­er sons in De­cem­ber. They died 16 days apart. One of them died from a blood clot on De­cem­ber 13 while the oth­er died on De­cem­ber 29 from COVID-19.

She said, "I stand­ing up here right now by the Grace of God be­cause on­ly God know how I stand­ing up right here."

Even though there was a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that the divers' had al­ready run out of oxy­gen, she said "I trust in the Lord and I still hop­ing even though we are at this point and they had been out there for hours, we still hop­ing that the good­ness of God will come for­ward, not on­ly for Yusuf but for each and every­one."

Greenidge said no one from Paria had con­tact­ed them up to that time. She said a div­er who was at the site said they heard a knock­ing com­ing from the pipe.

Yusuf Henry

"He said the knock­ing was like three knocks and that is a knock of dis­tress. They know that they want­ed help, so he said the team that he was with at the time want­ed to burst the pipe to get them out. They say they know what they had to do to take them out, how they would just flush them out."

How­ev­er, she said they were in­struct­ed by "high­er au­thor­i­ties" not to burst the pipe. She said they were more con­cerned with "the dis­as­ter that burst­ing the pipe may cause, so they weren't in any big hur­ry to save the lives stuck in the pipe."

Due to his broth­ers' deaths, she said Hen­ry took some time off work and on­ly re­cent­ly re­sumed du­ties.

Rishi Nagessar

Nages­sar's fam­i­ly

Mean­while, Nages­sar's wife, Vanes­sa Kussie, 48, woke up with prayers yes­ter­day, ask­ing God for her hus­band to re­turn to her alive. The cou­ple has been mar­ried for 12 years and they have a 30-month-old ba­by.

She said, "I have no feel­ings. I blank be­cause they could have done so much and they didn't. They could have saved peo­ple, send down the divers and let them do what they had to do, but they wait­ing for pro­to­col from Paria."

Kussie's un­cle, Car­li Bay/Cal­cut­ta/McBean coun­cil­lor Al­lan "Taxi" Seep­er­sad, was dis­gust­ed that Paria lacked the cour­tesy to in­form rel­a­tives what had tak­en place. Seep­er­sad com­plained, "The man­age­ment has a right to call the fam­i­ly and say what is tak­ing place, 13 hours now no one called.” He al­so said Coast Guard sta­tions should have been placed clos­er to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate so they could re­spond faster.

Even af­ter Young met with the fam­i­lies, nei­ther Kussie nor Seep­er­sad was sat­is­fied with what the min­is­ter had to say. Kussie said the meet­ing with Young was one of great dis­ap­point­ment.

Vanessa Kussie, wife of trapped diver Rishi Nagessar, is comforted by her uncle Allan Seepersad.

RISHI RAGOONATH

"Yes­ter­day one of the guys broke the rules and saved one of the divers. When he want­ed to go back in he was de­nied by the Coast Guard. Three oth­er divers came to help and they were de­nied. The min­is­ter shouldn't come here, hours have passed... They can't even an­swer ques­tions and they choose their words care­ful­ly be­fore they speak with us," she lament­ed.

Up to last evening, the fam­i­lies were still gath­ered at the gates of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

The min­is­ter was con­tact­ed for com­ment fol­low­ing his meet­ing with the fam­i­lies and the com­pa­ny but did not re­spond to a What­sApp mes­sage sent to him.

The Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer of the Coast Guard Ker­ron Valere said they will look in­to the claims.

Paria con­tin­ues its res­cue op­er­a­tions for the divers

An up­dat­ed re­lease is­sued by Paria around 3 pm stat­ed that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues its res­cue op­er­a­tions for the divers.

"The Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard and oth­er sub­ject mat­ter ex­perts were in sup­port of this op­er­a­tion. All stake­hold­ers con­tin­ue to work as­sid­u­ous­ly in this sup­port of this ac­tiv­i­ty." The com­pa­ny has al­so en­gaged the coun­selling ser­vice provider PEAP­SL to be on stand­by to sup­port the fam­i­lies and em­ploy­ees."

Stat­ing that Paria will work with LM­CS Lim­it­ed to ad­dress this sit­u­a­tion, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that LM­CS is a ser­vice com­pa­ny con­tract­ed by Paria with over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in en­gi­neer­ing de­sign, pro­cure­ment, ma­rine con­struc­tion, and land con­struc­tion ser­vices, in­clu­sive of div­ing-re­lat­ed un­der­wa­ter ser­vices and ma­rine lo­gis­tics sup­port.

Paria added that the divers who were en­gaged in this op­er­a­tion are cer­ti­fied and have a to­tal of over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence among them.

Christopher Boodram warded in hospital.

Sur­vivor–I thought I would die

Christo­pher Boodram, the on­ly div­er to resur­face on Fri­day, said he thought he was go­ing to die.

Boodram, 36, of Pointe-a-Pierre, is ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where doc­tors are still run­ning tests, but he was do­ing okay.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Boodram's wife, Can­dy, said her hus­band gave her a brief ac­count of his or­deal.

She said, "I don't know what hap­pened but they got sucked in­to a pipe and it was re­al­ly hard for them to get out." He told her that they called out to each oth­er and they met in an air pock­et.

"One of them was re­al­ly in­jured and they tried their best to move with him as far as they can. The two who felt they were okay, which was Christo­pher and Fyzie, de­cid­ed to swim out of the tank in all this slush and oil and wa­ter to get to the top. Both of them start swim­ming up­wards to get out of the pipe. Christo­pher said he gave up a few times well while swim­ming up be­cause he thought that was it. He thought he would have nev­er made it, but through God, he reached to the top."

She said two divers, who are not work­ing with the com­pa­ny, found him and were able to pull him out of the pipe on­to a boat and car­ry him to the barge be­fore they took him to the hos­pi­tal.

Cindy said her hus­band told her that when they got sucked in they lost their tanks. "But, he, how­ev­er, found a tank while swim­ming and he used that."

Say­ing that her prayers go out to the oth­er fam­i­lies, she added, "I am be­liev­ing in God for good out­comes."