Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Au­thor­i­ties in To­ba­go shift­ed in­to emer­gency mode over the week­end, af­ter bunker fu­el from an over­turned barge that caused an oil spill dis­as­ter last Feb­ru­ary resur­faced and washed ashore at Pe­tit Trou Bay in Lam­beau.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the area, a pun­gent odour of fu­el em­anat­ed along the shore­line as the black fu­el was seen among Sar­gas­so sea­weed.

In a re­lease on Sun­day, the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary said im­me­di­ate mea­sures, in­clud­ing the de­ploy­ment of oil boom bar­ri­ers, had been put in place to con­tain the spread of the oil.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine con­vened a meet­ing on Sat­ur­day with sev­er­al agen­cies to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion and plan the next steps.

To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency di­rec­tor Al­lan Stew­art, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, said fu­el that was trapped be­tween rocks and the sea floor had resur­faced.

Stew­art said, “The resur­fac­ing of this oil is a di­rect re­minder of what we were warned about—this is a phe­nom­e­non that hap­pens as a re­sult of these types of spills. It’s a sit­u­a­tion we need to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor, and when it reap­pears, we have no choice but to mop it up and take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to pro­tect our en­vi­ron­ment and pub­lic health.”

He said it was dif­fi­cult to say how much fu­el resur­faced and how much more was ex­pect­ed. How­ev­er, he said the vol­ume of fu­el spot­ted was enough to raise con­cern.

He added, “We saw an area just close to one kilo­me­tre along the shore­line, so it’s very dif­fi­cult to give an es­ti­mate or to quan­ti­fy it like by bar­rels. I can­not do that.”

Stew­art ex­plained that Petro­bras, the Brazil­ian oil com­pa­ny that faced a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in 2019, had warned them about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of oil resur­fac­ing even years lat­er.

“They would have point­ed out to us dur­ing those meet­ings and those brief­in­gs with us; they would have point­ed out that there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that af­ter prob­a­bly a year or two, we can still see oil show­ing up or hy­dro­car­bons show­ing up on our beach­es. Now, that came true to form,” he said.

Stew­art al­so de­scribed the con­di­tions that caused the oil to reap­pear.

“There is al­ways a pos­si­bil­i­ty, and that sunken oil will be cov­ered. And there is that pos­si­bil­i­ty that we will stop—re­mind­ed by the Petro­bras ex­pe­ri­ence—that we could ex­pe­ri­ence that as well,” he said.

He not­ed that the THA had de­ployed ab­sorbent booms and was work­ing to en­sure that the oil did not seep in­to the wet­lands.

Res­i­dents and vis­i­tors were asked to avoid the af­fect­ed area and re­frain from di­rect con­tact with the oil due to po­ten­tial health risks like ir­ri­ta­tion and nau­sea. Mean­while, the THA and TEMA are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

This Fri­day will mark the an­niver­sary of the day the Gulf­stream barge over­turned off the coast of Cove, spew­ing bunker and dev­as­tat­ing 15 kilo­me­tres of shore­line.

To date, the spill’s clean-up has cost To­ba­go ap­prox­i­mate­ly $72 mil­lion.