Rhon­dor Dowlat

Em­ploy­ees of Kleen Rite Dry Clean­ers yes­ter­day de­scribed the gas de­liv­ery dri­ver as a hero af­ter he alert­ed them to dan­ger mo­ments be­fore an ex­plo­sion and the fire.

Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Cheryl Ann Joseph, who has been em­ployed at the com­pa­ny for the past 14 years, said she along with the oth­er work­ers all knew the dri­ver, iden­ti­fied on­ly as Mr Neville, very well.

"He has been com­ing here for years and we nev­er had a prob­lem with him. In fact, on al­most all the oc­ca­sions we have seen him check­ing to make sure that every­thing is good and safe be­fore re­fu­elling of the tanks are done. If he thought some­thing was not done cor­rect­ly or what­ev­er wrong he would say and try his best to make things right," Joseph said.

The dri­ver, who is an em­ploy­ee of North Plant LPG Lim­it­ed, Gas­ton Street, Ch­agua­nas, was con­firmed to be the de­liv­ery dri­ver at two ex­plo­sion scenes–one last year, on Feb­ru­ary 5, at El Pecos, in Mar­aval, and the oth­er at Kleen Rite on Thurs­day.

The con­fir­ma­tion came from an of­fi­cial at the gas com­pa­ny to CNC3.

T&T Guardian was told by one of the work­ers, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, that ear­li­er that day (Thurs­day) a man came to ser­vice the tanks.

"Ap­par­ent­ly, PVC fit­tings were used and when Neville came he point­ed it out. Neville al­so said that he was smelling gas very strong and up­on checks dis­cov­ered that there was a leak. I think that it was at that point that Neville knew some­thing was not right and things were about to get worse when he ran in­side and shout­ed 'gas, gas' and that every­one should run for their lives," the work­er said.

Yes­ter­day, at about 1 pm, work­ers be­gan gath­er­ing at the ad­ja­cent NP gas sta­tion's com­pound wait­ing to see their boss, Solomon Ali. How­ev­er, they were told that he was not com­ing and that he had sent their pay pack­ets.

"I re­al­ly thought that we would have seen Mr Ali to­day be­cause we are so look­ing for­ward to talk with him. I'm a bit dis­ap­point­ed," Joseph said.

"Mr Ali is a kind man and is very good to us but it is sad that he has not spo­ken to us up to now (yes­ter­day af­ter­noon)," she said.

"Yes, we know what he is go­ing through right now, es­pe­cial­ly that his wife got very deep cuts and is hos­pi­talised but Mr Ali should show a lit­tle more care to­wards us be­cause we are the ones who worked in ded­i­ca­tion for him and now we are left with­out jobs," said an­oth­er work­er.

An­oth­er work­er, Sade O'Bradley, who is preg­nant, said that she has been work­ing with the dry clean­ers for over 14 years and was sad to see the es­tab­lish­ment, which is over 35 years old, go up in flames.

"It is a sad day for all. We have a clien­tele of thou­sands and they have been call­ing and lend­ing their sup­port. At the end of the day, no lives were lost but at the same time we are all left with­out jobs and an un­cer­tain fu­ture due to this tragedy," O'Bradley said.

Fire Sub Of­fi­cer Ish­mael Noel who was a part of the team of fire of­fi­cials that vis­it­ed the scene, yes­ter­day, said that it was too ear­ly in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions to dis­close in­for­ma­tion.

"What we did here to­day was car­ry out an in­spec­tion but while we, the fire of­fi­cials, will lead the in­ves­ti­ga­tions to find­ing the cause we would need to de­pend on oth­er agen­cies to step in," Noel said.

Thurs­day's ex­plo­sion not on­ly de­stroyed Kleen Rite but al­so af­fect­ed the near­by Sher­win Williams paint shop and a small busi­ness com­pa­ny, Small En­gine Ser­vices Lim­it­ed.

In a brief in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ali said that the in­ci­dent was dev­as­tat­ing and was try­ing to re­gain his com­po­sure. He said his wife, Sab­ri­na Ali, was still re­cu­per­at­ing from her in­juries at hos­pi­tal.

Clear guide­lines

Sev­er­al at­tempts were made to con­tact Ker­ry Ma­haraj, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of North Plant LPG, on the is­sue but he was un­avail­able.

North Plant LPG is the sup­pli­er for 17-20 per cent of the LPG mar­ket. The oth­er 80 per cent is held by Ram­co. An of­fi­cial of Ram­co, Lochan Sam­sun­dar, told the GML En­ter­prise Desk that there were clear guide­lines from the Min­istry of En­er­gy on the pro­ce­dure for re­fill­ing. These in­clude that be­fore fill­ing a tank the provider needs to en­sure that the tank is prop­er­ly cer­ti­fied or re­cer­ti­fied for use. The stamp with the date in­di­cat­ing this is usu­al­ly at the top of the tank on the shroud which pro­tects the tank.

Na­tion­al Pe­tro­le­um said it al­so has a check­list and is­sues safe­ty cer­tifi­cates to LPG dis­trib­u­tors when their trucks pass in­spec­tions. How­ev­er, NP ex­plained that LPG dis­trib­u­tors are ful­ly re­spon­si­ble for the con­duct and op­er­a­tion of their busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

The gen­er­al in­spec­tion of LPG equip­ment and en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with safe­ty re­quire­ments are the re­mit of the Min­istry of En­er­gy, the on­ly au­thor­i­ty with such pow­ers.