SASCHA WIL­SON

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Fumes from an oil spill in San­ta Flo­ra on Tues­day are caus­ing res­i­dents, in­clud­ing chil­dren, to fall sick and they are de­mand­ing that the Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd ad­dress their con­cerns.

The res­i­dents claimed yes­ter­day that they had no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the com­pa­ny and in a bout of frus­tra­tion, they ven­tured out of their homes de­mand­ing an­swers from com­pa­ny em­ploy­ees con­duct­ing clean-up op­er­a­tions at the site.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Her­itage on Wednes­day, the seep­age at the cor­ner of Ara­pi­to Trace and Well Road was mi­nor but res­i­dents com­plained that it’s a health and safe­ty haz­ard.

They com­plained of short­ness of breath, headaches and nau­sea. The res­i­dents said their an­i­mals were al­so af­fect­ed and their crops de­stroyed.

Al­though they have not re­ceived any of­fi­cial in­struc­tions from the com­pa­ny, res­i­dents have not been us­ing their gas stoves or light­ing any flames be­cause they are fear­ful it could spark a fire.

Res­i­dent Randy Ramjit, who lives next to the open land where the oil spill oc­curred, said around 10.30 am he got a high scent of hy­dro­car­bon and saw a small pock­et of oil.

Ramjit said it was rain­ing and half an hour lat­er, he re­alised that the en­tire area, in­clud­ing the back of his house, was cov­ered in oil.

He said the oil al­so flowed in­to oth­er res­i­dents’ prop­er­ties.

Ramjit con­tact­ed Her­itage and a team was dis­patched about 15 min­utes lat­er.

Tyrique Ramjit shows the oil behind his home in Agapito and Well Roads in Santa Flora, yesterday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

How­ev­er, the res­i­dent was not sat­is­fied with the qual­i­ty of the clean-up op­er­a­tions be­ing car­ried out.

“The clean-up that Her­itage is stat­ing they are do­ing is sim­ply to spread sand over the af­fect­ed area and cov­er it up to avoid a pub­lic scan­dal. In the mean­time, this has be­come a health and safe­ty is­sue for the res­i­dents in the area and there has been no one from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um reach­ing out to the pub­lic to find out what is their con­cern and how they are be­ing af­fect­ed,” he com­plained. Ramjit said the health of his wife and chil­dren was al­so be­ing af­fect­ed. He re­called that around 3.30 am on Wednes­day, his wife start­ed hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing and was tak­en to Siparia Health Fa­cil­i­ty.

“She had to un­der­go med­ical treat­ment for the in­hala­tion for ex­treme tox­ic fumes that we have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing here since the spill. My four chil­dren, they are com­plain­ing of con­stant headaches and feel­ing nau­seous. I have nowhere to go, I have to stay here, so I am in the fir­ing line of this is­sue,” he lament­ed.

Ramjit is al­so con­cerned about the health of his pet dogs. He es­ti­mat­ed that aside from him, some 50 to 100 res­i­dents are af­fect­ed.

“We are plead­ing, we are beg­ging. We are ask­ing Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um to come and do their due dili­gence and first seek the in­ter­est of the res­i­dents in the area.”

Res­i­dent Agnes Daniel, 66, said the oil flowed in­to the back of her yard where she has her chick­en pen. She asked her son to put her chick­ens in the coop be­cause they were walk­ing in the oil.

Jee­wan Ramjit, who grows and sells crops for a liv­ing, said he suf­fered loss­es.

“Even self they cov­er up the place there, the oil will still be in the land, which means now you can’t plant noth­ing there for a good few years,” he lament­ed.

He plants cit­rus, dasheen, pom­me­cythere, plum, bread­fruit, man­go and oth­er crops.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Her­itage re­ferred Guardian Me­dia to its re­lease on Wednes­day. In that state­ment, it said it was en­gaged in re­spond­ing to two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents at Agapi­to Trace, San­ta Flo­ra and along the right of way of the Her­itage Trunk Pipelines at In­verene Road, Co­coyea. It said both in­ci­dents in­volved mi­nor seep­age from near­by fa­cil­i­ties but its Emer­gency/Oil Spill Re­sponse Pro­to­cols were ac­ti­vat­ed. Her­itage al­so as­sured cleanup op­er­a­tions and con­tain­ment were on­go­ing and per­son­nel had con­tact­ed af­fect­ed res­i­dents.