RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@guardian.co.tt

One fam­i­ly was evac­u­at­ed from Fyz­abad, and fish­er­men were forced to halt their trade in Fuller­ton Beach fol­low­ing sep­a­rate oil spills.

The first spill oc­curred at Fuller­ton Beach, while the sec­ond oc­curred at Av­o­cat Vil­lage, Fyz­abad, about 30 miles away near the home of Vi­nesh Ma­hadeo.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Ma­hadeo said oil be­gan seep­ing in­to his yard on Thurs­day morn­ing.

His wife, Fer­oza Ma­hadeo, alert­ed Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, which dis­patched a crew to con­tain the leak be­fore it reached the near­by Av­o­cat Riv­er.

“They came very fast. They did their sur­vey and dealt with it quick­ly. They told us we can­not cook un­til the area is cleaned up,” he re­vealed.

As a pre­cau­tion, the Ma­hadeo fam­i­ly was re­lo­cat­ed to the Paria Suites Ho­tel while clean-up op­er­a­tions were com­plet­ed. Ma­hadeo said Her­itage per­son­nel as­sured him that their prop­er­ty would be re­stored once the work was fin­ished.

He said he did not know that the line was ac­tive, not­ing that his fam­i­ly had been liv­ing there for over 40 years. He ex­pressed a de­sire for the pipe top to be re­lo­cat­ed, say­ing that it ran through the vil­lage where there were scores of peo­ple.

Mean­while, at Fuller­ton, fish­er­man Kishore Ramd­han said the oil came ashore on Wednes­day, but by yes­ter­day, “all the boats and nets were cleaned.”

He added that a meet­ing was held with Her­itage of­fi­cials, who pledged fi­nan­cial sup­port for af­fect­ed fish­er­folk.

“Christ­mas is com­ing, and things are very hard for fish­er­men now. We are hop­ing they will set­tle us up soon,” he added.

For­mer fish­er­man Vish­nu Seep­aul, who joined the clean-up, said he was grate­ful for the tem­po­rary work.

“We get a lit­tle day work, so we’re mak­ing a lit­tle change. Things tough—look what I eat­ing, bis­cuit and sausage,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said Her­itage re­spond­ed to re­ports of what ap­peared to be hy­dro­car­bons on the Fuller­ton shore­line.

“While no loss of con­tain­ment or leaks oc­curred in Her­itage’s off­shore op­er­a­tions over the past week, the com­pa­ny mo­bilised its in­ci­dent re­sponse team to ini­ti­ate cleanup ac­tiv­i­ties,” Mooni­lal said.

He added that Her­itage’s Act­ing CEO, Ker­ry Ram­per­sad, met with fish­er­folk to ad­dress their con­cerns, and eight mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty were hired as part of the cleanup op­er­a­tions at Fuller­ton.

In a state­ment, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um con­firmed that its In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team in­ves­ti­gat­ed the spill at Mas­sa­hood, Fyz­abad, and dis­cov­ered a mi­nor leak in a 12-inch trunk pipeline that par­tial­ly ran un­der an unau­tho­rised oc­cu­pied struc­ture. The pipeline has since been plugged and clamped.

Her­itage said that fol­low­ing an as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion, the fam­i­ly was re­lo­cat­ed as a pre­cau­tion while restora­tion and clean-up were un­der­way. The com­pa­ny’s team re­mains on site and con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor air qual­i­ty and con­duct fur­ther as­sess­ments of the area.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries have been in­formed and will pro­vide up­dates, Her­itage said.