In the aftermath of the accident which sucked five men into a 30-inch pipeline at Paria Fuel Trading Company’s Berth 6, no timeline was set on how long the men could survive in the pipeline.
This was described as a major failure of Paria’s incident management team by the chairman of the Commission of Enquiry set up to investigate the deadly accident.
King’s Counsel Jerome Lynch made the comment during Thursday’s sitting of the commission while Paria’s HSEQ lead, Randolph Archbald was giving evidence.
Lynch said the five men, Yusuf Henry, Kazim Ali Junior, Fyzal Kurban, Rishi Nagassar and Christopher Boodram disappeared from the underwater hyperbaric chamber where they were doing maintenance work around 2.30 pm on February 25.
Boodram was rescued from the top of the pipeline some two and a half hours later.
“So at 5.30 (pm) or so, you know for sure that there are people alive in the pipe?” Lynch asked Archbald.
“We believed that,” Archbald said.
“Yes, exactly. There must have been a critical timeline upon which to work because at 5.30 or so, if we could get to them now, we might save one, two, three or four. If we wait an hour, we lose one. If it takes three hours, we may lose two. If it takes five hours, we may lose all, did you work to some kind of timeline?” Lynch asked.
Archbald admitted that no such timeline was set. He said by his estimate, the men could be alive in the pipeline up to 24 hours after the accident.
But Lynch said that estimate was not realistic.
“It does seem to me that you’re talking about a 24-hour window for these men to be alive is just a guess, a wild guess,” Lynch said.
However, he said while Paria initially stopped LMCS rescue divers from attempting a rescue, when other dive teams were called in, none were willing to enter the pipeline.
“After seven o’clock there was as far as we know, as far as I believe there was no one willing to traverse the horizontal line,” Archbald said.
This prompted Lynch to interject again, telling him he may be wrong about the willingness of well-equipped divers to enter the pipe at that time.
“If they (rescue divers) were willing, if that’s our finding in due course, that there were one, two, three or four divers who both had the ability and the willingness to do and you, at the IMT did not know that, then that was a failure in communications,” Lynch said.
Archbald said the willingness of the “LMCS supporters” on that night was not enough to effect a rescue.
“It may have been enough to die but not to effect a rescue,” he said.
Archbald continued to deny that Paria did not communicate with several dive companies whose staff were called out to assist with the rescue on that night.
Lynch said he would not be surprised if divers had declined to go into the pipeline after a significant amount of time had passed, saying few people would want to risk their lives to recover a dead body.
The commission will continue its sittings on Friday.