Kevon Felmine

At­tor­ney for the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) in the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Paria/LM­CS tragedy, Nyree Al­fon­so, has heaped blame on Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices (LM­CS) for sev­er­al over­sights in their dead­ly op­er­a­tions last Feb­ru­ary.

How­ev­er, she told the com­mis­sion that in­cor­rect de­ci­sions by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny cost four LM­CS divers their lives.

Al­fon­so agreed with Paria’s Ter­mi­nal Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er, Collin Piper, that man­ag­ing the in­ci­dent that sucked Christo­pher Boodram, Fyzal Kur­ban, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Rishi Na­gas­sar in­to Paria’s Sealine No.36 was not an easy task.

“I and those who I rep­re­sent do not be­lieve that Paria was placed in an easy po­si­tion on the night of Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022. But Paria must ac­cept that they made very wrong de­ci­sions on that night and the day fol­low­ing, which ul­ti­mate­ly cost these men their lives,” Al­fon­so said.

She said Paria of­fi­cials were hap­py to dis­tance them­selves from LM­CS’ work plan be­cause it was a turnkey con­tract where the com­pa­ny re­lied on the ex­pert.

How­ev­er, Paria did not al­low the same spe­cial­ist con­trac­tor to un­der­take or co­or­di­nate a well-planned and well-equipped res­cue at­tempt. She said Paria was al­so un­pre­pared to re­ly on the div­ing ex­per­tise of its sis­ter com­pa­ny Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um. 

“We heard from Mr Piper that an air hose, in his wit­ness state­ment, should be sent down to the men to pro­vide air. We heard noth­ing fur­ther to that, and no such air hose was sent.”

Al­fon­so added that while Paria did not at­tempt to res­cue the divers be­cause it lacked knowl­edge of the con­di­tions in the pipeline, it failed to get in­for­ma­tion from Boodram, who emerged from the pipe.

Al­fon­so said while LM­CS chose to car­ry out work us­ing scu­ba equip­ment, it did not break any reg­u­la­tions.

How­ev­er, LM­CS Dive Su­per­vi­sor An­drew Far­rah ad­mit­ted that if the divers had a rope at­tached to a har­ness at their hips, those at the sur­face could have re­trieved the men im­me­di­ate­ly, avoid­ing the trag­ic out­come.

She said it was ar­guable that the emer­gency re­sponse plans of Paria and LM­CS fell short.

She said LM­CS’s list of stand­by divers in­clud­ed Far­rah, who was not in gear and Kur­ban and Na­gas­sar, who were in the habi­tat work­ing.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there was no hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber to pro­vide oxy­gen ther­a­py in case the divers got out. Boodram had to find a fa­cil­i­ty on his own.

Al­fon­so said emer­gency divers were not on-site or near Paria. She said it ap­peared that both Paria and LM­CS op­er­at­ed in si­los and not to­geth­er to res­cue the divers.

Al­fon­so al­so not­ed that the Bu­reau of Stan­dards showed that on­ly vol­un­tary stan­dards ex­ist­ed for com­mer­cial div­ing in T&T.

The SWW­TU be­lieves that adopt­ing the 2010 stan­dards could have pre­vent­ed the tragedy, or even if the Delta P event had oc­curred, those on the top­side could have re­trieved the divers us­ing line ten­der­ing.

Al­fon­so said al­though T&T boasts ma­ture oil and gas and ship­ping in­dus­tries, au­thor­i­ties took no steps to reg­u­late the div­ing sec­tor, which sup­ports the en­er­gy and mar­itime in­dus­tries.

There­fore the SWW­TU calls for a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work giv­ing au­thor­i­ties pow­ers of over­sight, en­force­ment and pros­e­cu­tion.

She said, “Our client’s re­spect­ful rec­om­men­da­tion is that a reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work is put in place for com­mer­cial div­ing op­er­a­tions in Trinidad & To­ba­go. It would in­clude pre­scrib­ing min­i­mum cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for per­sons un­der­tak­ing com­mer­cial div­ing work, au­dit and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of schools pro­vid­ing in­struc­tions to such per­sons, in­spec­tion and au­dit of div­ing equip­ment.”