Sacha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A re­lax­ing evening with his fam­i­ly on Moth­er’s Day quick­ly de­scend­ed in­to chaos for Azan Mo­hammed, af­ter oil be­gan flow­ing from the ground in his prop­er­ty at Fyz­abad.

Due to an oil spill in the com­mu­ni­ty and the strong fumes em­a­nat­ing from the source, Mo­hammed’s fam­i­ly was among four evac­u­at­ed by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um on Sun­day night and tak­en to Paria Suites Ho­tel in La Ro­main, where they re­mained up to yes­ter­day.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um con­firmed that the fam­i­lies, com­pris­ing 20 per­sons, were

evac­u­at­ed. The com­pa­ny said at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 6.40 pm, Her­itage ar­rived in the com­mu­ni­ty and ob­served that the leak was on the Her­itage Pipeline Right of Way at Mas­sa­hood Vil­lage.

Up­on in­ves­ti­gat­ing, crew mem­bers re­port­ed­ly dis­cov­ered two leaks em­a­nat­ing from the 16-inch trunk oil pipeline.

The com­pa­ny said the leaks were iso­lat­ed and re­paired with­in hours.

The res­i­dents, the com­pa­ny added, have been evac­u­at­ed for the du­ra­tion of the clean-up op­er­a­tions and air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing.

Re­call­ing the in­ci­dent, Mo­hammed said, “Around 3 o’clock, we start­ed see­ing wa­ter flow­ing from the ground, and I thought it was the air con­di­tion, but it wasn’t. About an hour af­ter, I see­ing oil pour­ing from the ground. It start­ed to flow.”

Mo­hammed, who lives with 14 fam­i­ly mem­bers, in­clud­ing his wife and four grand­chil­dren un­der six-years-old, said his prop­er­ty at Oil Well Road was even­tu­al­ly blan­ket­ed with oil.

“Plen­ty, lots of oil. The whole place was flood­ed with oil from front to back, flow­ing with oil,” he re­called.

He said the fumes were al­so over­pow­er­ing.

“It is a hec­tic thing be­cause ac­tu­al­ly is oil and gas so you must feel some­thing...headaches, up­set with the smell,” he said.

Mo­hammed said that his fam­i­ly has oc­cu­pied the prop­er­ty for over five decades and they nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced an oil spill. He ad­mit­ted that the un­der­ground pipeline runs through his prop­er­ty but claimed it was not func­tion­al.

He said just be­fore Petrotrin shut down, em­ploy­ees came to the vil­lage and told them the line was go­ing to be di­vert­ed.

“This line was al­ways here, hon­est to God, this line was al­ways here, but it was a dead line and it now open back,” he claimed.

Mean­while, at San Fran­cique Road, Sa­ree­ta Ali was in­side play­ing with her two-year-old daugh­ter when she was alert­ed by her hus­band Nadeem Ali that oil was flow­ing through their yard.

“We re­alise that we were smelling a very high

sul­phurous smell. My grand­fa­ther-in-law had an asth­ma at­tack. So we had to evac­u­ate him im­me­di­ate­ly. He is 87 years old so he could not be around this en­vi­ron­ment. To see oil in your drains and flow­ing to the front, that was very up­set­ting to me, I have nev­er seen any­thing like this be­fore.”

She said the re­sponse from Her­itage was fair­ly fast, but she was con­cerned about the dam­age to the back of her house.

“We had planned to get in­to hy­dro­pon­ics and get some stuff grown. We don’t know how that soil is go­ing to be af­fect­ed...,” Ali said.

She claimed this was the sec­ond oil leak in nine months, but it was worse.

“I would like to see they put in place a con­tin­gency plan so this does not hap­pen again. I’ve heard no def­i­nite plans in terms of com­pen­sa­tion...”

Not­ing that they have lived in the com­mu­ni­ty for three years, she said, “I would like my daugh­ter to in­her­it the prop­er­ty, but I don’t want her to in­her­it a prop­er­ty that is go­ing to have her health in dan­ger.”

Ali said the fumes were al­so af­fect­ing her.

“I have blur­ry eyes, my nos­trils are burn­ing, and I gen­er­al­ly have a light-head­ed feel­ing.”

While Mo­hammed and her fam­i­ly are al­so stay­ing at Paria Suites, she said the com­pa­ny has not in­di­cat­ed when they would be al­lowed to re­turn to their home.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the af­fect­ed area yes­ter­day, the fumes were strong in some ar­eas and work­ers were still pump­ing oil from the drains and as­sess­ing and clean­ing res­i­dents’ prop­er­ties.

Mean­while, Her­itage stat­ed that its In­ci­dent Man­age­ment team will re­main on site and con­tin­ue to man­age the re­sponse. The com­pa­ny fur­ther stat­ed that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries had been in­formed of the in­ci­dent and it will con­tin­ue to pro­vide up­dates as re­quired.