Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Strong fumes from an oil spill in a riv­er forced the ear­ly dis­missal of the Ves­signy Sec­ondary School and the clo­sure of the beach fa­cil­i­ties yes­ter­day. A Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um am­bu­lance and a fire truck were seen parked out­side the school, but there were no con­firmed re­ports of stu­dents or res­i­dents be­ing tak­en for med­ical treat­ment. Her­itage has yet to re­veal the source of the leak, but per­son­nel have been de­ployed to be­gin con­tain­ing and clean­ing up the spill.

The en­er­gy com­pa­ny’s per­son­nel and trucks ac­cessed the riv­er from the beach fa­cil­i­ty com­pound. Mar­va Suite, the Min­istry of Tourism’s li­ai­son of­fi­cer at Ves­signy Beach, said she con­tact­ed Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um around 6 am af­ter be­ing alert­ed by vil­lagers and the fa­cil­i­ty’s se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel. She said Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um re­spond­ed quick­ly, and af­ter as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion, she was in­struct­ed to close the fa­cil­i­ty.

Life­guards were al­so asked to leave to pre­vent any­one from falling ill. Veron­i­ca Mo­hammed, 76, who lives close to the river­bank with nine rel­a­tives, in­clud­ing five chil­dren, said she be­gan smelling the fumes around 2 am. “My eyes and things start­ed to burn. When I looked, I saw oil run­ning down on the ground. I can’t sleep. It smells re­al bad,” she said. Her son-in-law, Suresh Be­har­ry, an am­putee, took her two grand­chil­dren, aged three and five, fur­ther down the beach be­cause the fumes were too strong for them. Be­har­ry was not cer­tain if they would be able to re­turn to their home.

“They have to get some­where to put us and the chil­dren, but where will we go? We have nowhere to go be­sides there. What will we do, stay there and die or move out and live?” He said they were wait­ing to get an up­date from com­pa­ny of­fi­cials. An­oth­er res­i­dent, Pas­to­ra Her­nan­dez, said her daugh­ter com­plained about the smell of gas when she left for work around 5 am. She said when she woke up lat­er that morn­ing, the fumes were stronger, and she be­gan feel­ing dizzy.

Her­nan­dez said it was the third spill she had ex­pe­ri­enced in a few years but was not the worst. Quin­cy Joseph, pres­i­dent and founder of No Youth Left Be­hind, a com­mu­ni­ty-based group, ex­pressed con­cern about the en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact. “Our main con­cern is that this is one of our sites where we pro­mote eco-tourism and en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness. We re­cent­ly plant­ed some man­groves, and we are con­cerned about the fish. We use the area to at­tract youths,” he said.

How­ev­er, Joseph was con­fi­dent that Her­itage would work quick­ly to ad­dress the is­sue.

Her­itage iden­ti­fies source of spill

In a re­lease, Her­itage said a pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment iden­ti­fied the source of the spill as a leak­ing six-inch pipeline and the af­fect­ed sec­tion has been iso­lat­ed.

Af­ter be­ing alert­ed of the oil spill, the com­pa­ny stat­ed that it im­me­di­ate­ly mo­bilised its emer­gency re­sponse team to re­pair the line and be­gin cleanup and re­pair work is cur­rent­ly un­der­way to pre­vent fur­ther im­pact

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) were no­ti­fied and are work­ing close­ly with first re­spon­ders, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, and com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers to co­or­di­nate cleanup ef­forts, the com­pa­ny said.

Her­itage as­sured that it’s com­mit­ted to min­imis­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact and en­sur­ing a swift res­o­lu­tion.