The Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries has launched an investigation into a fire at the NiQuan Energy Trinidad Ltd plant in Pointe-a-Pierre that claimed the life of pipefitter Allanlane Ramkissoon.
The release came hours after the Ramkissoon’s family begged for answers surrounding his death and questioned whether the incident was being covered up.
In a tearful interview at their St Croix Road, Lengua Village, Barrackpore home yesterday, his parents and six siblings said he was the backbone of their family.
“I will miss my son. He is everything in my life,” cried his mother, 66-year-old Christine Ramkissoon.
She said she was still trying to recover from the death of her eldest daughter in 2021 from COVID-19, and now she is faced with the death of another child.
She said Ramkissoon provided financial and other support to her and his 72-year-old father, Danny Ramkissoon, who suffers with health issues. She said they depended heavily on him, as he was the only one of her six other children, two daughters and four sons, with a steady income.
The mother said he had planned to help pay for her knee surgery and fix her driveway and home.
“I don’t know how I will make out. It really hurting me,” she said.
Last Thursday, Ramkissoon, a pipefitter at Massy Energy and Energy Industries Ltd, suffered burns to 60 per cent of his body during an accident flash fire at NiQuan Energy’s Pointe-a-Pierre plant.
Ramkissoon, 35, was flown to a specialist burns unit in Colombia for treatment but died on Sunday.
Wiping away tears, his younger sister, Ruthlane Ramkissoon-Gobin, recalled that when they saw him at a private hospital before he was taken to Colombia, he was unrecognisable.
Outlining a list of questions they want answered, she said, “We want to know where is the incident report? What exactly happened to my brother? Where was the HSE officers? Who checked to see if this plant was safe before they sent my brother? It just looking like a cover-up to us because we not getting any information. What OSHA has to say? What the companies have to say?”
Barely able to talk through her tears, Ramkissoon’s eldest sister, Evelaine Ramkissoon, said he nursed her back to health and cared for her son after she was stabbed 14 times during a domestic incident in 2021.
She has been staying with his two daughters, ages 13 and 15, since the incident, as Ramkissoon’s wife went with Ramkissoon to Colombia, and was still there yesterday.
While she is trying to put on a brave face for his children, she said his death is tearing her apart.
“This is so horrifying. I cannot imagine someone dying like this,” she lamented.
She said she had heard that her brother was removing a hose from a platform at the time of the incident.
“He already took down the first hose and when he was taking down the second one, I heard he tried to detach it. The man underneath saw fire coming and called out to him and in seconds he turn his back to try to fit through space a little bigger than his body. He tried to save himself, but he was in confined space and he got blast with that explosion.”
She said her brother jumped and rolled on the ground as he tried to extinguish the fire.
“I saw an article where they said he was lying on the ground for three hours waiting for an ambulance to come for him. After going through something so terrible he was there suffering. We don’t know what is the truth. We don’t know what went on and we want answers,” Evelaine lamented.
His eldest brother Johnlane said Ramkissoon had stayed home on the day of the previous explosion at NiQuan in 2021, and he begged him then to resign because the job was too dangerous.
“I say brother, it have no money if something happen to you and you die. It have no money to bring you back,” he recalled.
He said Ramkissoon told him he was going to leave his job this year and go full time into farming. They were going to plant citrus and vegetables on several acres of land he owned.
“He supposed to done retire already,” he said.
Evelaine said they prayed for his recovery and at one point thought he would have survived.
“I say praise God, thank you for answering our prayers,” said Evelaine.
However, three hours later they got the tragic news.
In a release yesterday, the ministry said it received a report of the incident, in which Ramkissoon suffered severe burn injuries while conducting preparatory work for planned maintenance works on the plant.
Extending sincere condolences to Ramkissoon’s family, the ministry said a team comprising a petroleum engineer, a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer and a petroleum inspector have been mandated to investigate the incident to determine the root cause and contributory cause(s) of this incident.
“The MEEI trusts that all parties involved will cooperate with its team so that this unfortunate incident can be properly investigated,” the release stated.