ambika.jagassarsingh
@guardian.co.tt
Paria Fuel’s terminal operations manager Colin Piper yesterday testified that surviving diver Christopher Boodram told him his four LMCS colleagues, who were sucked into Sealine 36 on February 25, were most likely dead at the time he emerged from the pipeline.
In Piper’s written statement to the commission, he had affirmed that Boodram, upon being rescued from the chamber, told him, “‘Mr Piper, I want to say upfront I ain’t think dem fellas make it’ or words to that effect.”
His witness statement also added that Boodram told him he “crossed ‘Blacks,’ who was unresponsive” and along the way, lost the other divers, Fyzal Kurban, Kazim Ali Jr, Rishi Nagassar and Yusuf Henry.
However, this was never documented in Paria’s Incident Management Team (IMT) report to the Commission of Enquiry into the Paria/LMCS Division Tragedy.
This led lead counsel for the CoE, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, to question whether Piper had written his witness statement from memory or notes during yesterday’s sitting.
“There are some things that stick with you, this is one of the things that stuck with me and I kept repeating this... I am aware it is not in this note here, this log, but that statement stuck with me and I thought I should include it,” Piper said.
Maharaj asked Piper to show him where in the IMT report Boodram’s supposed statement was recorded, to which he stated, “It is not there.”
Piper’s testimony contrasted what Boodram, the sole survivor of the Paria tragedy, said when he testified on November 22.
“I very much doubt that I would say those fellas died because I came out and told everybody they were living...it doesn’t have anybody that could deny that I said everybody was living who was there...I would not say something like that...the series of how he said it happen, when did I cross Blacks...at no point of time. I was in front of Blacks all the time,” Boodram testified then.
He also said he had no recollection of speaking to anyone after he was put on an ambulance and sent to the hospital for emergency treatment.
Earlier on in cross-examination yesterday, Piper also said he could not sanction a rescue without knowing the conditions within the pipeline.
Maharaj asked Piper if in the event of the problem with visibility, he could not have utilised the divers who were willing to enter the pipeline.
Piper explained that he decided against this course of action since he did not have information about what was happening in the pipe, despite knowing that Boodram had been rescued and Michael Kurban, son of one of the deceased Paria divers, Fyzal Kurban, had entered and exited it.
“Paria could not sanction to sending somebody into that pipeline...as the incident commander, I have a priority, the safety of the responder is a very high priority for me, so before I can send any responder, any rescuer into that line, I had to ensure or be reasonably certain that it was safe for him to do so.”
Commission chairman Jerome Lynch, KC, then asked whether Piper was aware a GoPro had been recovered from within the pipes, which would have attested to the conditions present within Sealine 36.
Piper said he was aware there was the possibility of this footage, since Paria’s acting technical lead, Catherine Balkissoon, “saw them (LMCS) looking at something that may or may not have been a GoPro.” However, he did not consult with LMCS managing director Kazim Ali Sr to enquire about its existence.
Lynch asked if Piper had obtained any plan that might mitigate his concerns about not knowing the condition of the pipeline.
Piper answered, “No, all I knew from them was that people said they were just going into the pipe, they had no plan...nobody came forward with no plan.”
He also denied hearing of any rescue plans by the divers from Balkissoon.
“I was in constant contact with Ms Balkissoon...she did not tell me of any plan that she would have been informed of...if Ms Balkissoon had been informed of any plan, she would have told me.”
Earlier on in the cross-examination, Maharaj also asked whether Piper, as the commander of Paria’s IMT, had a timeline for the men’s survival in the pipeline after Boodram was rescued.
Piper said the timeline he allocated for the men was “a couple hours.”
He said they had “immediately recognised we did not know the conditions in the pipeline...we knew if there were any air pockets, there would be vapours in it...we also knew all they would have other than that would be their air bottles and that would maybe give them a couple hours...2-3 hours at the most...there was no way to tell definitively.”
Lynch questioned whether Piper and his crew had factored in that Boodram had already been in the pipeline for approximately 2-3 hours.
“Well, we would’ve estimated maybe 3,4,5 hours of course everybody was in hope...from when Mr Boodram came out, we simply didn’t know, we just knew we had to move quickly.”
Piper added that they had not really calculated anything due to their limited information and if “one man had one air bottle per man, if even one man had maybe even two air bottles, that was the sort of limits we were giving 3,4,5 hours.”
Lynch then said Piper should have known how much oil was contained in and pumped out of the pipes, and if he had not known, consultation with written documents that were supposed to be kept would have given Paria the ability to calculate the average air space within the line.
Piper said he did not look at the record and could not say anything definitive, but said in hindsight, the limit was calculable.
Maharaj also accused Piper of being untruthful about instructions passed between LMCS and Paria regarding the draining of Sealine 36.
Piper said the instructions passed were not for LMCS workers but for his own operators to be guided on their work expectations for the day.
Lynch asked why the email containing these instructions was sent to the contractor if this were the case, to which Piper said it was meant to show the manner of work expected of his workers.
Piper was also asked if Paria had accounted for a Delta P situation in their emergency response plan before accepting LMCS’ proposal, to which he responded no since he thought the contractor was supposed to identify these risks.