RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

With the search for her hus­band Pe­te Phillip tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed, preg­nant wife, Can­da­cy Phillip con­tin­ues to face the new year with hope.

Her fifth child, Ja­son, is ex­pect­ed in Feb­ru­ary, and Can­da­cy said she now had to make the fi­nal prepa­ra­tions in­de­pen­dent­ly.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Can­da­cy shared that Ja­son’s birth was not the on­ly cel­e­bra­tion she and Phillip had planned, as they would have al­so cel­e­brat­ed their 17th wed­ding an­niver­sary this month.

“All I want is clo­sure and for them to find him,” she ex­plained.

She added that Phillip had al­ways worked in the oil in­dus­try and had over 23 years of ex­pe­ri­ence as a rig work­er. Their four chil­dren, aged three to 13, had al­ways been Phillip’s fo­cus, and Can­da­cy said she was fear­ful of how she would care for all of them if Phillip was nev­er found.

“It is hard with­out him. I am pray­ing every day. I am liv­ing with hope,” she added.

On Mon­day, of­fi­cials at Well Ser­vices in­formed her that the search and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions had been tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed. She gave thanks that, de­spite the stress, her un­born ba­by was do­ing well.

Well Ser­vices, in a state­ment, said ad­di­tion­al safe­ty mea­sures were be­ing im­ple­ment­ed for all per­son­nel in­volved in the search and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions. The com­pa­ny stat­ed that ex­perts would as­sess the area and take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to en­sure the safe­ty of all per­son­nel in­volved.

Phillip, 47, went miss­ing af­ter part of the deck from Rig 110, owned by Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, col­lapsed in the Gulf of Paria around 3 am on De­cem­ber 22.

Her­itage Off­shore East Field has since been de­clared a dan­ger­ous site, and ac­cess is now pro­hib­it­ed.