SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

& AM­BI­KA JA­GAS­SARS­INGH

Sat­ur­day will make it one year since an un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance ex­er­cise took a dead­ly turn when five divers, em­ploy­ees of LM­CS Lim­it­ed, were sucked in­to a pipeline at the No 36 Sealine ris­er on Berth #6 at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, Pointe-a-Pierre.

Four of those divers, Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry, re­mained trapped in the pipeline and it took a few days for their bod­ies to be re­cov­ered.

To­day, in the first part of a se­ries look­ing back at one of the worst in­dus­tri­al ac­ci­dents in this coun­try’s his­to­ry, Christo­pher Boodram, the lone sur­vivor of that hor­rif­ic ac­ci­dent, talks about that trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence.

“How I can teach my daugh­ter to swim when I fraid to go in the wa­ter?”

More than a year af­ter the trag­ic ac­ci­dent that al­most claimed his life, Christo­pher Boodram’s dis­tress and pain are al­most pal­pa­ble.

He has been re­ceiv­ing coun­selling since the Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022, ac­ci­dent at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd which took the lives of four of his div­ing “broth­ers”. But Boodram says he is scarred for life as the ac­ci­dent has robbed him of his peace of mind, liveli­hood and the abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly raise his chil­dren.

The day the ac­ci­dent took place was Boodram’s sec­ond day back at work af­ter los­ing his moth­er the pre­vi­ous month and be­ing di­ag­nosed with COVID-19.

Short­ly be­fore 3 pm, four of the divers were in­side a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber try­ing to re­move an in­flat­able plug from the pipeline. Footage from a Go­Pro cam­era worn by Ali Jr shows him div­ing in­to the wa­ter just off Berth 6 and swim­ming to the cham­ber to hand over a span­ner.

What the five divers did not know was that dif­fer­en­tial pres­sure or Delta P had de­vel­oped in­side the pipeline when oil was be­ing pumped out of it al­most a month ear­li­er.

By de­flat­ing the plug, they trig­gered the Delta P, which sucked all five of them and their equip­ment in­to the oil-coat­ed 30-inch pipeline which runs along the seabed be­tween Berths 5 and 6.

Boodram man­aged to crawl along the pipe un­til he got to the part of the line where they had been sucked in some three hours ear­li­er. He was even­tu­al­ly res­cued and tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

A Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was set up to in­ves­ti­gate the ac­ci­dent af­ter rel­a­tives of the vic­tims and mem­bers of the pub­lic ac­cused Paria of re­fus­ing to res­cue the men.

Ev­i­den­tiary hear­ings have been com­plet­ed and a re­port is due to be hand­ed in to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on April 30.

Boodram is still strug­gling to come to terms with the deaths of his four col­leagues.

“I think it dif­fi­cult even go­ing to the beach since this hap­pened. My last daugh­ter beg­ging me to go to the beach be­cause its a stone’s throw away but any­time I go there I would see (Berths) 5 and 6,” he re­vealed.

“My daugh­ter is . . . go­ing on 4 this year. How can I prop­er­ly play with her? How can I teach her to swim if I ‘fraid to go in the wa­ter?” he asked.

He ad­mits that he has been on a down­ward spi­ral since the ac­ci­dent: “Some­times I just sit­ting down and I just get a flash­back. Some­times in the mid­dle of the night I jump out my bed cold sweat­ing, wak­ing up my wife, dis­turb­ing her from sleep­ing when­ev­er she’s home sleep­ing with me.”

In ad­di­tion to these night­ly ter­rors, Boodram is plagued by fre­quent “day­mares.” He de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as a re­cur­ring night­mare as thoughts of his de­ceased col­leagues con­sume his mind every day.

“It’s like a teabag. Every time you dip it, it get­ting dark­er, and dark­er and dark­er. That’s what go­ing on here with this, it can’t come out of my head,” he said.

Al­though Boodram has spent most of his life work­ing in the oil and gas in­dus­try, he can­not fath­om re­turn­ing to work as a div­er.

“I don’t think I could re-en­ter the wa­ter, at least not right now. I used to en­joy go­ing in the sea and fish­ing,” he ad­mit­ted.

“I have a boat. Since this hap­pened, I haven’t gone out there yet. It’s some­thing me and my coun­sel­lor work­ing on but as she says, ba­by steps.”

Boodram is still phys­i­cal­ly re­cov­er­ing from the tragedy and is un­der­go­ing phys­i­cal ther­a­py and coun­selling but he wor­ries that he may not be able to fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port his fam­i­ly.

“It has been very, very tough. My wife is a nurse but af­ter she meets the bills there is noth­ing more, lit­tle to noth­ing. I mean we have three young chil­dren...I didn’t ask for this to hap­pen, it hap­pened,” he said.

Be­fore the ac­ci­dent, Boodram’s great­est pride was his abil­i­ty to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly. Now he wor­ries about be­ing able to make ends meet.

“A man’s pride is bring­ing home the ba­con, it’s pro­vid­ing for his fam­i­ly, pro­vid­ing for his chil­dren. That was my pride, to say, ‘Hey, I did that.’ When you take away that, it’s like cor­ner­ing a li­on. You break­ing me.”

Boodram and his fam­i­ly made it through the Christ­mas sea­son was through the gen­eros­i­ty of their well-wish­ers. While he is grate­ful for the as­sis­tance he has re­ceived, Boodram is dis­ap­point­ed and an­gry that no one from Paria has stepped for­ward to as­sist him or the fam­i­lies of the oth­er vic­tims.

He said: “It shouldn’t be where we have to high­light this in an in­ter­view. It should be, ‘Mr Boodram how are you cop­ing with your in­juries?’ I should ex­plain how I am cop­ing. It shouldn’t have to be, ‘Mr Boodram how are your fi­nances?’ It shouldn’t be like that and I am ask­ing for the au­thor­i­ties to put some­thing in place for some­thing like this hap­pen­ing to oth­er peo­ple.”

As the lone sur­vivor of the div­ing tragedy, Boodram of­ten won­ders why he was able to es­cape in the place of the oth­er men, since they, like him, have fam­i­lies.

He ad­mit­ted: “The on­ly thing that makes me feel I had a rea­son to live is my kids and my wife, but some­times I ask my­self why, what is the rea­son I came out of there? What hap­pen to the next four men? They didn’t have wives and kids and peo­ple who loved them? Yes, they have.”

He has been try­ing to pow­er through his pain as his biggest goal is to en­sure his chil­dren are hap­py, even if he is not.

“Even if I suf­fer­ing in­side, I can’t let that re­flect on my kids. My kids have a life and I did every­thing in my pow­er to make sure I give them a life that I nev­er had and I will try my best not to let this get in the way of their life as best as I can” he said.

“I don’t know how much more my shoul­ders can take. Right now, it get­ting tired and weary.”

Boodram said he lives in the hope that all five fam­i­lies af­fect­ed by the Paria div­ing tragedy will not be for­got­ten.

“Every­body say­ing that Boodram af­ter a gold mine, Boodram af­ter the mon­ey. If I am un­em­ployed, how do I pay for my coun­selling ses­sions? How do I do that?” he asked.

“In my mind, these peo­ple owe me and I will do any­thing in my pow­er to en­sure these peo­ple pay me and the oth­er fam­i­lies be­cause one can­not go with­out the oth­er.”

He said since the ac­ci­dent lit­tle to no help has been giv­en to the fam­i­lies. He es­ti­mates that even a frac­tion of the mon­ey that Paria are yet to pay LM­CS for the line main­te­nance con­tract on Berth 6 could have gone a long way.

“All the em­ploy­ees, all my col­leagues who dis­placed, look­ing for work, that kind of thing, so why Paria didn’t even take $1 mil­lion you know and say well we’ll get to the bot­tom of this and deal with it. We just tak­ing $1 mil­lion from this $5 mil­lion and drop in a lit­tle $100,000 a lit­tle $50,000 or a lit­tle $20,000 self. Or even self a month­ly $500 ham­per for these fam­i­lies? Why Paria didn’t do some­thing like that?” he asked.

Boodram said he hopes the fi­nal re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the tragedy will bring about some change in the in­dus­try.