RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny says it can­not com­ment on a 12-minute video that shows for the first time what res­cuers would have en­coun­tered had they en­tered the No. 36 sealine where four divers were trag­i­cal­ly killed last Feb­ru­ary.

Since the video was aired by CNC3 News, there has been an out­pour­ing of out­rage from some cit­i­zens who say the video was meant to sway pub­lic opin­ion in Paria's favour.

The com­pa­ny had been wide­ly con­demned for its re­fusal to al­low oth­er divers in­to the pipeline af­ter Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar, Yusuf Hen­ry and Kaz­im Ali Jr dis­ap­peared in­to a vor­tex. Ques­tions were raised about why the divers were not wear­ing prop­er hard hel­mets with a sur­face air sup­ply as stip­u­lat­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al div­ing stan­dards.

Paria was al­so quizzed about whether any checks are made in­to the equip­ment and med­icals of divers.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions posed by Guardian Me­dia on Fri­day, the com­pa­ny said, "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, at this time Paria will not be able to re­spond to your ques­tions as there is an on­go­ing OS­HA in­ves­ti­ga­tion; the for­mal es­tab­lish­ment of a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry to in­quire in­to the in­ci­dent; and lawyers act­ing on be­half of cer­tain per­sons af­fect­ed by the in­ci­dent have is­sued Pre-Ac­tion let­ters there­by ini­ti­at­ing the civ­il lit­i­ga­tion process."

The com­pa­ny added, "Paria will ac­cord­ing­ly ad­dress all ques­tions and is­sues aris­ing out of or in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent in the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­ra in due course."

LM­CS, the con­trac­tor hired to do the un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance works is­sued a state­ment this week say­ing it was barred by Paria from con­duct­ing a res­cue mis­sion.

"Our sin­gu­lar aim was the res­cue of our em­ploy­ees. We not on­ly had the man­pow­er and per­son­nel to car­ry out their res­cue, but we pro­vid­ed Paria with the method­ol­o­gy to ex­e­cute the res­cue. At all ma­te­r­i­al times, we were pre­vent­ed from ex­e­cut­ing this res­cue by Paria and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard. We were not giv­en the chance to save the lives of our em­ploy­ees," LM­CS said.

Paria sub­se­quent­ly coun­tered the state­ment say­ing, "It was de­ter­mined by Paria – and sup­port­ed by the Coast Guard, the OSH Agency, and ex­ter­nal ex­perts – that it was too dan­ger­ous for any­one to pro­ceed fur­ther in­to the pipeline with­out pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant risk to life."

The com­pa­ny ex­plained that a ver­ti­cal drop from the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber to the seabed is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 feet with­in a 30-inch di­am­e­ter pipe.

It said video footage from a re­mote­ly op­er­at­ed cam­era sent down in­to the pipeline showed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 feet, tanks were wedged against the wall of the said pipeline as it ran along the seabed cre­at­ing an ob­struc­tion.