A 12-minute long video, believed to have been captured inside the 30-inch diameter pipeline in which four divers disappeared and died at Paria Fuel’s Berth No 6, has surfaced.
The footage was recorded almost 10 hours after the four divers were sucked into a vortex between 2 pm to 3 pm at No. 36 sealine on February 25.
Guardian Media obtained a copy of the video footage, which showed the pipeline where the divers – Rishi Nagassar, Fyzal Kurban, Christopher Boodram, Yusuf Henry and Kazim Ali Jr reportedly entered to do underwater maintenance works. Only Boodram survived.
The date on the video tag states 11.57 pm on Friday 25, February 2022.
The video showed there were no human forms seen at 87 feet into the pipeline. The camera, travelling on the bottom right, reached the bottom of the vertical section (riser) of the pipeline at approx 65 feet and stirs up residue.
Then it proceeded along the pipeline which runs on the seabed. At 67 feet, it encountered diving paraphernalia. More paraphernalia is found at 71 feet.
An oxygen tank and other material are found at 80 feet and another oxygen tank and other equipment are seen at 87 feet. It could not go past 87 feet and throughout the video, none of the divers was seen.
The video lends credence to claims that the four divers could have been further inside the pipeline when the vortex sucked them in.
Vishnu Ramjattan, a former Petrotrin superintendent who worked at Berths No 5 and 6 and knows the pipelines inside out, said two things could have caused a vortex. He said extreme backwash from a passing vessel or the removal of an expansion plug near the hyperbaric chamber constructed to provide a ready air supply could have caused the situation.
T&T’s commercial diving instructor, Dr Glenn Cheddie, has already said the divers should not have been wearing scuba gear and oxygen tanks for such a dangerous job. RDS
