Sascha Wil­son

It is pos­si­ble that Kaz­im Ali Jnr, one of four divers who died in the Paria Fu­el tragedy, could have been alive for up to 39 hours in the sub­sea pipeline, ac­cord­ing to a pri­vate au­top­sy.

At­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen pre­sent­ed the find­ings of the au­top­sy, which was con­duct­ed by Pro­fes­sor Hu­bert Dais­ley, dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Hilton Trinidad in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Ramdeen, who is rep­re­sent­ing Ali’s par­ents, said his body was in the ear­ly stages of de­com­po­si­tion and he suf­fered two frac­tures to his leg. Ali’s fa­ther owns LCMS Ltd, the com­pa­ny where the divers were em­ployed.

Ali, Yusuf Hen­ry, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Christo­pher Boodram were do­ing main­te­nance work in a hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber at Paria’s No.36 Saline ris­er on Berth 6 off Pointe-a-Pierre on Feb­ru­ary 25, when they got sucked in­to a 30-inch di­am­e­ter pipeline.

Show­ing a pho­to of Paria’s al­leged time­line dur­ing the ini­tial stages of the in­ci­dent on a white­board, Ramdeen said just an hour af­ter the divers were sucked in­to the pipeline, Paria was ad­vised they were prob­a­bly dead.

The divers en­tered the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber at 2.15 pm.

“At 2.45, they lost con­tact with the divers in the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber and in one hour and three min­utes af­ter that, Paria, on their op­er­a­tions white­board, is say­ing HSE per­son­nel S Ramkissoon re­port­ed to them the chances of sur­vival are slim in an hour and three min­utes.”

He said the last en­dorse­ment stat­ed that two hours lat­er, Boodram was res­cued. Ramdeen added that even af­ter Boodram came out alive and told them the oth­er divers were alive in air pock­ets in the pipeline, they did noth­ing to save them. In­stead, he said the com­pa­ny pre­vent­ed any res­cue ef­forts, even af­ter knock­ing sounds were heard com­ing from the pipe.

Ramdeen said ac­cord­ing to Ali’s gov­ern­ment-is­sued death cer­tifi­cate, he died on Feb­ru­ary 28, the same day his body and the bod­ies of two oth­er divers were re­moved from the pipeline. The cause of death was list­ed as as­phyx­ia and drown­ing.

Un­sat­is­fied with the death cer­tifi­cate, Ali’s par­ents hired Dais­ley to do an­oth­er au­top­sy.

Ramdeen said Ali’s body was in the pe­tro­le­um and wa­ter emul­sion mix­ture for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 76 hours and was in a very ear­ly stage of de­com­po­si­tion.

“This is what Dr Dais­ley found. It seems that an ap­prox­i­mate time of Mr Ali’s death would have been some 48 hours-plus or mi­nus 12 hours be­fore his body was dis­cov­ered.”

Not­ing that Ali’s body was dis­cov­ered at 6 pm on Feb­ru­ary 28, he said the au­top­sy stat­ed that the av­er­age time he would have been alive was 27 hours and he would have been “alive fight­ing for his life.”

He added, “On the ear­li­est time of death, he would have been alive in the pipeline for 15 hours and 15 min­utes and on the lat­est time of death he would have been alive in the pipeline for 39 hours and 15 min­utes.”

He added that the ear­li­est time of death would have 6 am on Sat­ur­day and the lat­est time of death at 6 am on Sun­day.

The au­top­sies con­duct­ed on the divers by the State did not give the time of their deaths, so this was the first time in­for­ma­tion on this as­pect was be­ing re­vealed.

Ramdeen al­so said ac­cord­ing to se­cu­ri­ty re­ports, the work­ers were com­mu­ni­cat­ing by knock­ing on the pipeline.

“Dur­ing that time, Paria had stopped. They came to the con­clu­sion that they will leave them in­side of the pipeline alive to die,” said Ramdeen, who added, “There can be no oth­er re­port be­cause Paria did not com­mis­sion any re­port to con­tra­dict the find­ings of Dr Dais­ley.”

He said when the re­port was hand­ed to Ali’s par­ents, they could not read it af­ter they saw the con­clu­sion of Dr Dais­ley be­cause they broke down in tears know­ing that their child was left in the pipe to die by Paria.

He said LM­CS had their divers’ equip­ment ready and they were pre­pared to go in­to the pipeline but they were blocked by Paria.

Ramdeen said the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry is go­ing to be as use­less as the oth­er in­quiries that have been set up in the past.

“It is not go­ing to bear any fruit for the peo­ple. When it is set up even­tu­al­ly, what are the find­ings of the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry go­ing to do for the fam­i­lies who have lost their loved ones?”

He sug­gest­ed that the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty and TTPS be giv­en the sup­port to con­clude their in­ves­ti­ga­tions and send it to the au­thor­i­ties. He al­so called on the Prime Min­is­ter and the En­er­gy Min­is­ter to sus­pend the Paria board and every­one who was in­volved in the de­ci­sion to block the res­cue ef­forts.

“They should have been sus­pend­ed 35 days ago be­cause in 35 days, I don’t know and you don’t know what has tak­en place at berth Five and Berth 6 and the re­ports of Paria.”

La­belling the deaths of the divers as in­dus­tri­al mur­der, he said crim­i­nal charges could be prof­fered fol­low­ing the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Ramdeen al­so said a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry is be­ing set up while the divers’ fam­i­lies are suf­fer­ing and can­not put food on the ta­ble. He said Dais­ley’s re­port showed the ex­tent of the reck­less­ness, neg­li­gence, lack of car­ing and hu­man­i­ty that per­vad­ed the in­ci­dent.

Ramdeen al­so claimed the di­a­gram shown to the pub­lic by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young was not a true re­flec­tion of what took place that day.