KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

“This is we fam­i­ly. All yuh can’t stop we.”

This was how Land and Ma­rine Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Ltd (LM­CS) per­son­nel re­spond­ed when Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd ex­ec­u­tive gave them in­struc­tions to stop div­ing in search of four of five divers who got sucked in­to the 30-inch Sealine 36 on Feb­ru­ary 25.

Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry died in the in­ci­dent.

Paria’s act­ing Tech­ni­cal Lead, Cather­ine Balkissoon, said the com­pa­ny’s In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team (IMT) had de­ter­mined that it was un­safe to con­tin­ue div­ing off Berth No.6 in the af­ter­math of the dead­ly Delta P in­ci­dent.

Balkissoon’s role was to pro­vide on­site lo­gis­ti­cal and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and sup­port to the search and res­cue of the LM­CS divers. De­ployed at Berth No 6, she was the eyes and ears of the IMT, who were on shore at the Ship­ping Build­ing at Paria’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty.

As she trav­elled to Berth No 6, Christo­pher Boodram, the lone sur­vivor in the tragedy, was on his way to shore.

In her sworn state­ment to the Com­mis­sion­er of En­quiry in­to the Paria/LM­CS Div­ing Tragedy, Balkissoon re­called that around 7 pm, Paria’s In­ci­dent Com­man­der, Collin Piper, called her on the phone. Stand­ing on an LM­CS barge, she put her mo­bile phone on speak­er mode to make Piper’s voice and in­struc­tions au­di­ble to every­one around her. Balkissoon al­so re­layed the in­struc­tions to the LM­CS per­son­nel, in­clud­ing con­struc­tion su­per­vi­sor Dex­ter Guer­ra.

How­ev­er, she said some of the LM­CS per­son­nel re­act­ed with hos­til­i­ty to the di­rec­tive.

“I heard one of them shout­ing in re­sponse that ‘this is we fam­i­ly and all yuh can’t stop we’, or words to that ef­fect. I, there­fore, walked away.

“At this time, divers were still in the wa­ter, and no divers came out of the wa­ter or stopped div­ing af­ter I de­liv­ered Mr Piper’s in­struc­tions to them,” Balkissoon stat­ed.

Piper con­sid­ered send­ing se­cu­ri­ty to the site but Balkissoon ad­vised against it, say­ing it would on­ly wors­en the sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, she said nei­ther Piper nor any­one else in au­thor­i­ty in­struct­ed the Coast Guard or Paria se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel to en­force a ban on div­ing.

“I ob­served that LM­CS divers con­tin­ued to dive in the wa­ter un­abat­ed and with­out in­ter­fer­ence af­ter I passed on to them Mr Piper’s in­struc­tions to me. I al­so ob­served ad­di­tion­al LM­CS per­son­nel ar­riv­ing on­site around 7.30 pm and plac­ing div­ing equip­ment on the barge utilised by LM­CS.”

Re­gard­ing Paria’s ef­forts to as­cer­tain the con­di­tions in­side the pipeline, Balkissoon said around 7.35 pm, the crew of the ves­sel Spearfish con­tact­ed her, say­ing they had a re­mote­ly op­er­at­ed un­der­wa­ter ve­hi­cle (ROV). Af­ter com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LM­CS, how­ev­er, they de­ter­mined it was too big for the pipeline.

At the same time, Pro­fes­sion­al In­spec­tion Ser­vices Ltd ar­rived on the barge with a borescope cam­era, but it did not have lights and was on­ly 100 feet long. At 8 pm, LM­CS per­son­nel in­formed Paria HSE that they heard knock­ing near Berth No 5, which con­nects to Berth No 6 via Sealine 36. How­ev­er, they could not de­ter­mine if it was in a pat­tern or a ran­dom se­quence. There­fore, they want­ed to open the flange at Berth No 5.

LM­CS man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Kaz­im Ali Sr al­so made this re­quest to Piper around 9.15 pm. How­ev­er, Piper’s in­struc­tions were not to re­move the flange but the cov­er of the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber where the divers worked.

Balkissoon said she showed Lt Edric Har­g­reaves and his Coast Guard team a re­moved sec­tion of the Sealine 36 ris­er on the barge so they could un­der­stand the size of the pipeline and eval­u­ate a res­cue. How­ev­er, they found a dive in­to the line was too risky, as they were nei­ther trained nor had the equip­ment to per­form a com­mer­cial div­ing task.

At mid­night, re­sponse teams in­sert­ed an­oth­er boro­scope at Berth No 6, but it did not show air pock­ets or the miss­ing divers up to the dis­tance it could reach.

For sev­er­al days, Balkissoon took up du­ty at the site. She wit­nessed a pipeline crawler in­sert­ed in the pipeline around 3 am Feb­ru­ary 26, but it even­tu­al­ly en­coun­tered a scu­ba tank it could not cross.

At 4.30 am, the IMT agreed to re­move the flange at Berth 5 and Hum­ming­bird Safe­ty Sys­tems Ltd in­sert­ed their crawler from this side, but it en­coun­tered thick oil which pre­vent­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty.

On Feb­ru­ary 27, Ali Snr in­di­cat­ed that his divers want­ed to dis­cuss an op­tion with the IMT. There was a plan to clear the line by fill­ing the ris­er at Berth No 5 with wa­ter to move the oil from the hor­i­zon­tal part of the pipeline.

That morn­ing, how­ev­er, the IMT in­formed Balkissoon that Paria had switched its fo­cus to re­cov­er­ing the divers and was prepar­ing for a wa­ter dis­place­ment ex­er­cise to re­move the divers’ bod­ies.

Balkissoon said on re­turn­ing to the site on Feb­ru­ary 28, Paria com­plet­ed prepa­ra­tions for the ex­er­cise, stress­ing the need to re­cov­er the bod­ies with re­spect and dig­ni­ty. The pump­ing of wa­ter in­to the line from Berth No.5 be­gan be­tween 10.45 am-11 am but had to stop and restart­ed at 5.45 pm.

“At 5.50 pm, I ob­served oily wa­ter, div­ing gloves and a scu­ba tank fol­lowed by the bod­ies of three divers in se­quence and oth­er div­ing equip­ment. The faces of the bod­ies were un­recog­nis­able.”

Balkissoon said she need­ed time to com­pose her­self and con­tain her emo­tions af­ter wit­ness­ing the re­trieval of the bod­ies.

Plan­ning con­tin­ued in the fol­low­ing days but it was not un­til 12.30 am on March 3 that the fourth body emerged from the line.