Just three weeks af­ter a woman died from in­juries caused by a gas cylin­der ex­plod­ing, a 28-year-old Pe­nal labour­er is in crit­i­cal con­di­tion af­ter a sim­i­lar ac­ci­dent.

De­von Joseph of Sun­rees Road suf­fered burns and is in the In­ten­sive Care Unit of San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Po­lice said around 3.45 pm on Mon­day, Joseph’s un­cle was up­stairs in his home when he heard a loud ex­plo­sion. He ran down­stairs and saw that the apart­ment in which Joseph lived was on fire.

Of­fi­cers from the Mon Re­pos Fire Ser­vices re­spond­ed and ex­tin­guished the blaze. Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the fire was caused by the ex­plo­sion of a 20-lb Ram­co gas cylin­der lo­cat­ed in the kitchen. Joseph sus­tained burns to his face and body and was tak­en by the Fire Ser­vices am­bu­lance to the hos­pi­tal, where he un­der­went emer­gency surgery.

Cpl Lalsiew, WPC Ben­jamin, and PC Pas­cal were on the scene, and T&TEC per­son­nel dis­con­nect­ed the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply from the res­i­dence.

On Sep­tem­ber 27, 47-year-old su­per­mar­ket su­per­vi­sor Ria George of Dig­i­ty Vil­lage, Debe, died at the hos­pi­tal weeks af­ter suf­fer­ing burns un­der sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. George woke up around 5 am on Au­gust 27 to cook for her­self and her hus­band. Rel­a­tives claimed the Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um (NP) Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny gas cylin­der in her home was al­leged­ly leak­ing. As she at­tempt­ed to light the stove, there was an ex­plo­sion. En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal had in­struct­ed NP to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, but the re­sults have not yet been made pub­lic.

—Sascha Wil­son