The oil spill dis­as­ter in To­ba­go was close to pos­si­bly be­com­ing a tier-three lev­el dis­as­ter yes­ter­day, af­ter large vol­umes of oil from a sunken ship blan­ket­ed the shore­line and even washed on­to main roads.

The west­ern side of the is­land smelt like as­phalt and some busi­ness­es in Scar­bor­ough were forced to close, even as the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency launched Op­er­a­tion Gulf­stream to clean-up the oil spill cre­at­ed by the sunken ves­sel.

At an­oth­er emer­gency me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said his team was do­ing all in its pow­er to cush­ion the im­pact.

Au­gus­tine said, “We have, at this point, the threat lev­el el­e­vat­ed at a tier-two lev­el but we an­tic­i­pate that in the com­ing hours, it may be very well el­e­vat­ed to tier-three.”

Guardian Me­dia was told the ship may have drift­ed to To­ba­go, leav­ing a trail of oil in its wake be­fore run­ning aground on the coral reef off Ca­noe Bay.

Au­gus­tine said the ves­sel may have been drift­ing sub­merged un­der­wa­ter and un­de­tect­ed for some time. He said the in­ci­dent had al­so ex­posed To­ba­go’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and high­light­ed the need for au­ton­o­my.

“When we talk eq­ui­ty and equal­i­ty, we are talk­ing about en­sur­ing we have equal­i­ty in­fra­struc­ture and mea­sures for our coun­ter­parts in Trinidad. We have a dis­as­ter of this mag­ni­tude and we have to keep say­ing take sam­ples and take it to Trinidad. We have to get equip­ment we don’t have on is­land.”

He not­ed that if the spill is moved to Tier Three lev­el, the Pres­i­dent will de­clare a na­tion­al emer­gency.

In such a sce­nario, the ODPM, through the Min­istries of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, For­eign Af­fairs and Fi­nance, will co-or­di­nate the ac­qui­si­tion of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al aid as­sis­tance.

Mean­while, 67 peo­ple were a part of clean-up ef­forts on land yes­ter­day.

At sea, head of the dive team Alvin Dou­glas, of To­ba­go Ma­rine Safe­ty and Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Ltd, said divers had dif­fi­cul­ty find­ing the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber of the ves­sel and not­ed that the main liv­ing quar­ters, which usu­al­ly hous­es crew mem­bers, re­mains miss­ing from its struc­ture.

“Be­cause that ves­sel was over­turned, the su­per­struc­ture is go­ing to be first to be ripped off. So, the liv­ing quar­ters is some­where still in the deep. What we need to do is to fol­low that de­bris stream and see if we can see any kind of rem­nant of any­one who may be trapped in­side.”

While the reg­is­tra­tion num­ber of the ves­sel was uniden­ti­fi­able, he said an on­line search showed it may be part of a fleet of oil prod­ucts tankers.

He said, “The reg­is­tra­tion num­ber, which is on the stern, was al­most im­pos­si­ble to get be­cause there is oil still leak­ing un­der the boat and it was very murky.”

Af­ter hours of search­ing for any pos­si­ble life on­board the sunken ves­sel, divers con­firmed there was no one on­board.

Dou­glas said divers no­ticed the ves­sel’s up­per struc­ture was ripped off from the hull. He said the team plans to ac­cess the de­bris to­day to see if they find any crew mem­bers who may have gone down in the su­per struc­ture.