Sascha Wil­son

As clean-up op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue in Ves­signy Vil­lage, La Brea, fol­low­ing an oil spill on Tues­day, life is be­gin­ning to re­turn to nor­mal in the com­mu­ni­ty, but one fam­i­ly has been tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed.

Suresh Be­har­ry and nine oth­er mem­bers of his fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing five chil­dren, were re­lo­cat­ed hours af­ter the oil spill was de­tect­ed, due to the strong tox­ic fumes.

The fam­i­ly’s home is lo­cat­ed mere feet away from a riv­er that was con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by the oil leak. Mean­while, the com­pa­ny has yet to give the all-clear for Ves­signy Beach to be re­opened to the pub­lic. Her­itage per­son­nel were still on site when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day.

The com­pa­ny con­firmed that the oil spill was caused by a leak­ing six-inch pipeline, which has since been re­paired. In a re­lease on Thurs­day, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that in­de­pen­dent air qual­i­ty tests in the af­fect­ed area were on­go­ing, and the read­ings re­mained with­in nor­mal lev­els.

Her­itage stat­ed, “The com­pa­ny is work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, and com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers to mit­i­gate the im­pact of the spill and re­store the af­fect­ed area. Her­itage re­mains com­mit­ted to min­imis­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and en­sur­ing a thor­ough and ef­fi­cient re­sponse.” 

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Be­har­ry, whose leg was am­pu­tat­ed two years ago due to health com­pli­ca­tions, said the com­pa­ny re­lo­cat­ed them to the Paria Suites Ho­tel, and they were do­ing well. He said of­fi­cials told them that they would like­ly re­turn home to­day.

Mean­while, 71-year-old res­i­dent Kameel Jo­han said the scent was now tol­er­a­ble.

“Now we can cook, light fires and pre­pare meals,” he said.

He said the com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed meals for them on Wednes­day. While he does not know the scope of work, he said a crew had been work­ing day and night, and he is sat­is­fied with their re­sponse.

“I am com­fort­able home here be­cause, as I said, the scent is not as strong as be­fore. They work­ing; I be­lieve they have done their best,” he said.