“Ma, ah go­ing an dead,” cried a trau­ma­tised 12-year-old Adeil Cyrus as his body sank deep­er in­to a pit of oil sev­er­al hun­dred me­tres from his Point Fortin home on Wednes­day.

His broth­er Darold Clarke, 14, who had first at­tempt­ed to res­cue him, was al­so sink­ing in the pit when their step­fa­ther Ken­neth Small, 64, rushed to save them. He too got stuck and with day­light fad­ing, it took a valiant ef­fort from vil­lagers, Point Fortin fire of­fi­cers, At­lantic’s Emer­gency Re­sponse Team and Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um work­ers to res­cue the fam­i­ly from cer­tain death.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, Adeil, Darold and two oth­er boys were fly­ing a kite at the Coro­na­tion Park near their home when the thread burst and it land­ed in the bush­es at the back of the Egypt Vil­lage Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, where the boys are stu­dents. The area is owned by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, which has sev­er­al pipelines and wells there. Po­lice said around 4.30 pm they re­spond­ed to a dis­tress call at Techeir Road in Egypt Vil­lage. As they walked to the back of the school, over a drain and through tall bush­es they came up­on the oil pit. Small told them that 10 min­utes ear­li­er he re­ceived the news that his step­sons were stuck in the oil and while try­ing to res­cue them he too be­came trapped.

At the time, vil­lagers had al­ready cut down a tree and threw tyres in­to the pit for the vic­tims the grab on to but it was not enough. It was then SSO Sanchez and his team of fire of­fi­cers stepped in and with the as­sis­tance of the oth­ers, Cyrus, Clarke and Small were pulled out and tak­en to the Area Hos­pi­tal, Point Fortin. They were even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where they were treat­ed and ward­ed in a sta­ble con­di­tion.

When the Guardian Me­dia team vis­it­ed yes­ter­day, chil­dren were play­ing in the yard of the pri­ma­ry school. They were to­tal­ly un­aware of the dan­ger a short dis­tance away where their school­mates had al­most per­ished. When the GML team reached the site of the in­ci­dent, the lad­ders were most­ly sub­merged and the tyres and tree trunk re­mained as a re­minder of the res­cue mis­sion the day be­fore. Even in the bush­es, the news crew ex­pe­ri­enced the sink­ing and the grip­ping pull of the oil.

The boys’ cousin Wayne Huyghue, one of the vil­lagers who as­sist­ed in the res­cue, said it was Darold and Adeil’s friends who rushed to their moth­er’s home and alert­ed the fam­i­ly of their plight. Their moth­er Fredric­ka Hodge was told that Adeil fell in­to the pit and when Darold walked across to help them he too got stuck. Huyghue said when he saw Hodge run­ning he sus­pect­ed some­thing was wrong and de­cid­ed to fol­low.

“When we reached there we saw the two chil­dren stuck. We tried to pull them out but we could not pull them out so we called the po­lice and they came with the fire of­fi­cers, then the am­bu­lance came. We got to take out one of them. There was me, two oth­er fel­las and the step­fa­ther. We got to take out the first one but we could not take out the rest at the point in time. Petrotrin peo­ple came then,” Huyghue said.

Adeil was tak­en out first as on­ly his head and right arm was vis­i­ble. Darold was up to chest height in oil. The vil­lagers had to use a rope and tyres to en­sure the boys’ heads re­mained above the sur­face.

Huy­hgue said that since he was a child the pit had ex­ist­ed and al­though no one had ever got stuck in it be­fore Wednes­day, vil­lagers have lost cows and oth­er an­i­mals to it in years gone by. Now re­al­is­ing the dan­ger, he wants Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um to in­stall warn­ing signs and fence the area.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny said the pit was a nat­u­ral­ly oc­cur­ring oil seep area and af­ter Wednes­day’s in­ci­dent its HSE per­son­nel were dis­patched to the scene. The com­pa­ny said in ac­cor­dance with its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty phi­los­o­phy, it pro­vid­ed ap­pro­pri­ate sup­port and as­sis­tance to the af­fect­ed per­sons ac­cord­ing­ly.