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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

How Paria & Heritage managed diving tragedy

by

Sharlene Rampersad
959 days ago
20221123

For the first time since the Paria div­ing tragedy, which re­sult­ed in the deaths of four LM­CS divers, What­sApp mes­sages be­tween Paria and Her­itage of­fi­cials from the in­ci­dent now show how the trag­ic in­ci­dent was be­ing han­dled be­hind the scenes.

The mes­sages form part of the Sup­ple­men­tal Core Bun­dle Fi­nal doc­u­ment which was pub­lished to the web­site of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) set up to in­ves­ti­gate the in­ci­dent.

The CoE start­ed on Mon­day and so far, the Com­mis­sion­ers, led by King’s Coun­sel Jerome Lynch have heard from Christo­pher Boodram, the lone sur­vivor of the Feb­ru­ary 25 in­ci­dent.

His col­leagues, Yusuf Hen­ry, Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Fyzal Kur­ban, died in­side the 30-inch pipeline the five were sucked in­to while do­ing un­der­wa­ter sub­sea main­te­nance work on Paria’s Berth 6 in Pointe-a-Pierre on the day in ques­tion.

In the sub­mis­sion made to the CoE, screen­shots of mes­sages sent to a What­sApp group ti­tled “Temp Paria In­ci­dent” doc­u­ment­ed how the in­ci­dent was han­dled by the com­pa­ny.

It con­tains sev­er­al up­dates on the in­ci­dent, ac­com­pa­nied by dates and times.

From the doc­u­ment, Guardian Me­dia ob­served mes­sages sent from con­tacts iden­ti­fied as ex­ec­u­tive man­agers at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um, in­clud­ing COO Pa­tri­cia King, CEO Ar­lene Chow, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Ar­lene Gorin-George, busi­ness de­vel­op­ment leader James Walk­er, HSSE leader Wen­dell Seecha­ran, mid­stream leader Anil Singh and op­er­a­tions tech­nol­o­gy man­ag­er Shamael Ali.

There were sev­er­al oth­er names in the chat, in­clud­ing Os­ei Flem­ing Hold­er, Cur­tis De Vries and Rawle Arneaud.

Many of the mes­sages in­clud­ed ab­bre­vi­a­tions, with ROV, which ac­cord­ing to Google stands for Re­mote­ly Op­er­at­ed Ve­hi­cle, which is used in the oil and gas in­dus­try.

In the first mes­sage on Feb­ru­ary 25, Walk­er writes “Pro­vid­ing an up­date 5.37 pm…”

Walk­er states Chow was speak­ing to Shell about their ROV and de­tails Chow’s ef­forts to get an ROV from oth­er com­pa­nies in the in­dus­try.

He al­so de­tails ef­forts to get divers to the scene, stat­ing a de­ci­sion was made to mo­bilise eight divers, two ves­sels, two emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians (EMTs), un­der­wa­ter cam­eras and un­der­wa­ter lights.

In an­oth­er up­date at 6.27 pm, Walk­er said one man had been re­cov­ered.

“Sus­pect the oth­ers are lodged in the pipeline. LM­CS wants to get in­to pipeline, Coast Guard does not have the re­sources on the ground at the time. Coast Guard left Staubles Bay. Res­cue plan to be put in place,” Walk­er wrote.

He al­so pro­vides up­dates on the ar­rival of the two div­ing teams and the ROVs.

In an­oth­er up­date at 7.37 pm un­der the head­ing “Med­ical,” Walk­er wrote, “Am­bu­lance and EMTs- Four am­bu­lances on site, two from TTFS and two from GMR. The San­ta Flo­ra am­bu­lance will ar­rive in twen­ty min­utes with two EMTs…”

He adds, “Hos­pi­tal - San Fer­nan­do Hos­pi­tal in­formed.”

Walk­er al­so ref­er­ences a hold­ing state­ment, writ­ing, “Draft­ed by Paria and a sep­a­rate from Her­itage. Her­itage draft will re­place Paria draft.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter­wards, King re­sponds to an ear­li­er mes­sage she sent, which said, “Gulf­stream 30 mins away. Com­ing ful­ly equipped with lights, com­pressed air etc,” with “OT­SL Gulf­stream Ea­gle Ves­sel 30mins away.”

Sev­er­al of the mes­sages from the thread ap­pear to have been omit­ted from the ev­i­dence sub­mit­ted to the CoE, as the next mes­sage comes from Flem­ing Hold­er at 12.53 am.

At 1.01 am on Feb­ru­ary 26, Walk­er gives an­oth­er up­date, pro­vid­ing notes from calls made short­ly be­fore mid­night on Feb­ru­ary 25.

“Hum­ming­bird- An­tho­ny Viera. 90 de­gree el­bow. If crawler can­not work, a res­cue team can­not get in. Crawler weights 80lbs and has good trac­tion, LED lights if they can on to it. Teth­er on the crawler al­lows to pull out, man­u­al­ly.”

At 12.20 am, Walk­er notes that Andy John­son, of East­ern Divers, was will­ing to en­ter the pipe but wrote, “Has no cam­eras.”

Walk­er then says there would be a three-pronged ap­proach.

“AL­NG ver­ti­cal + Hum­ming­bird hor­i­zon­tal with crawler + ROV on out­side. Then East­ern Divers for the manned res­cue.”

At 12.40 am, Walk­er said the ex­pect­ed ar­rival time of the East­ern Divers was 90 min­utes.

“Briefed Andy that there is a breath­ing tank lodged in the pipe,” Walk­er con­tin­ued.

Fif­teen min­utes lat­er, he ref­er­ences Paria’s gen­er­al man­ag­er, Mush­taq Mo­hammed.

“Mush­taq up­date- ex­plained that the cam­era went 30ft on the hor­i­zon­tal be­fore it met the stuck tank. Next steps is to get the cam­era past the tank. Hum­ming­bird cam­era when it ar­rives more like­ly to get past the tank.”

He then said a div­er would en­ter the pipeline to vi­su­al­ly in­spect.

“When the div­er goes to check, us (*sic) the tank to make noise for the guys to hear if they’re con­scious,” Walk­er wrote.

In an up­date from Flem­ing Hold­er, Walk­er said there was a “non-in­tru­sive” dive be­ing planned. He said while an ROV had ar­rived, there was no man­u­al or “knowl­edge­able op­er­a­tor.”

Walk­er goes on to log com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mes­sages, in­clud­ing a plan to “open Berth 5” and send in a crawler.

In an up­date la­belled “26/2 0254,” Walk­er writes, “Two work­ing drafts for press re­leas­es.”

Fo­cus on man­ag­ing in­fo leaks

The next se­ries of mes­sages are time stamped at 7.29 am.

Chow writes, “How did they get it,” then “In” then “East­ern Divers stood down??”

Arneaud re­sponds, “They formed a sort of vig­il. Ap­par­ent­ly, they came in to sup­port the res­cue ef­fort when the event oc­curred and re­mained on­site.”

King re­sponds, “They are go­ing to start tak­ing pics n post­ing. This needs to be man­aged as­ap.”

Chow then chimes in again, sug­gest­ing the group, who re­main uniden­ti­fied, be moved to an of­fice.

“Give them a good con­fer­ence room good *sic and drink for the,” Chow’s next mes­sage reads.

Again, mes­sages seem to be miss­ing from the con­ver­sa­tion thread, as the next page in the ev­i­dence be­gins with De Vries re­spond­ing to a mes­sage from King to call to the gate, say­ing the in­for­ma­tion was sent but the of­fi­cers did not pass it along to their re­lief.

Chow re­sponds, “Tell him get w the plan.”

In his re­sponse, De Vries said, “Just called they should have clear­ance…again.”

Gorin-George then up­dates the group about a me­dia re­lease be­ing de­layed as “New­man” want­ed to in­clude in­for­ma­tion on LM­CS and how they were award­ed the con­tract for the work.

In an­oth­er up­date, Walk­er doc­u­ments “to do’s for BST 26.2 0800.”

This list in­cludes check­ing Berth 6 for “busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity,” EAP for Her­itage staff, “Plan Safe­ty Stand­down 830-900 am Mon­day,” me­dia re­leas­es, a press con­fer­ence planned for lat­er in the day and plans to have a Port-of-Spain of­fice cleaned.

At 9.50 am, Singh writes, “Mush­taq and Collin Piper are the 2 main Paria point per­sons.”

In three mes­sages at 9.57 am, Seecha­ran re­veals he has been in­formed that Boodram test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19.

In his tes­ti­mo­ny at the CoE yes­ter­day, Boodram de­nied hav­ing COVID and said his re­peat­ed re­quests to be placed in a de­com­pres­sion cham­ber were ig­nored.

“He is present­ly at the SFG hos­pi­tal and there­fore we need med­ical ad­vise to get him to HULL Sup­port Fa­cil­i­ty at Labid­co to un­der­go de­press in thr Hy­per­bar­ic Cham­ber,” Seecha­ran wrote.

At 10.04 am, Gorin-George said, “A space is now iden­ti­fied for the fam­i­lies. Ner­is­sa is now work­ing to move them. A Paria em­ploy­ee is hav­ing what she terms a break­down.”

She lat­er writes, “And one fam­i­ly mem­ber, Kaz­im from LM­CS is al­so very ag­i­tat­ed…”

Kaz­im Ali Snr, the own­er of LM­CS, lost his son, Kaz­im Ali Jr, in the in­ci­dent.

The rest of the mes­sage can­not be seen.

The next mes­sage came from Singh, ask­ing Gorin-George where the rel­a­tives of the miss­ing men were be­ing kept.

While the tragedy was un­fold­ing, there were nu­mer­ous com­plaints from the rel­a­tives of the miss­ing men that they were not re­ceiv­ing in­for­ma­tion from Paria and they were be­ing made to wait at the com­pa­ny’s gates.

In re­sponse to Singh’s mes­sage, Gorin-George re­sponds, “Hum­ming Bird Suite.”

At 10.20 am, Ali sends sev­er­al mes­sages to the group, doc­u­ment­ing the ar­rival of the Lore­na B bunker ves­sel.

“Par­al­lel... Res­cue team and scaf­fold­ing to be set up at both berths,” Ali wrote.

He fol­lows his mes­sages with two di­a­grams of the pipeline con­nect­ing Berths 5 and 6.

At 10.23 am, De Vries wrote, “Wives and girl­friends are mus­tered in the car park out­side the com­pound at Plein Palais gate.”

Chow in­structs, “We need to get them in a room.”

Sev­er­al mes­sages seem to be omit­ted at this point as well, as the next mes­sage comes from Seecha­ran stat­ing doc­tors had got­ten clear­ance to re­lease Boodram from the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

At 11.01 am, Seecha­ran said two doc­tors at­tend­ing to Boodram had ad­vised he no longer need­ed to be placed in a de­com­pres­sion cham­ber.

At 11.13 am, Chow writes, “The east­ern divers need a con­fer­ence call with the ops guys. He is say­ing the line needs to be flushed be­fore they can go in.”

King re­sponds, “So please en­sure Mush­taq n the Min­is­ter are aware of this ex­tra sen­si­tive is­sue.”

Arneaud joins the con­ver­sa­tion af­ter King ad­vis­es Chow to let the divers from East­ern con­tact him.

“The plan is to re­con­nect with East­ern once the line is pumped out and the crawler goes back in to give us vi­su­als and more in­for­ma­tion.”

Lift­ing in­ci­dent set­back

At 11.18 am, Gorin-George notes that me­dia per­son­nel and fam­i­ly were on site, “mak­ing de­mands.”

At 12.14 am on Feb­ru­ary 27, Flem­ing Hold­er writes, “Cut­ting of the braces on the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber has start­ed.”

Al­most three hours lat­er, he re­ports that the lift­ing team was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in re­mov­ing the cham­ber.

At 3.42 am, he writes, “Good morn­ing lift­ing in­ci­dent oc­curred at 3.39 am.”

Flem­ing Hold­er ac­com­pa­nies his mes­sages with sev­er­al pho­tos and then writes, “Wire rope burst.”

He notes there were no in­juries in the in­ci­dent.

Chow re­sponds “Lord. Lift­ing rope,” at 3.46 am.

He re­sponds, la­belling the in­ci­dent as a set­back and say­ing a crane barge was re­quired.

“Divers re­quired to in­spect any dam­ages to the ris­er.”

At 4.12 am, King chimes in, say­ing, “This shows the weights n rat­ing of the rope wasn’t checked. Need to ful­ly stop.”

Flem­ing Hold­er again con­firms that there were no in­juries and ad­vis­es that work per­mits have been pulled.

King re­sponds, “We hv to stop this rush­ing as the teams aren’t check­ing work prop­er­ly.”

The last mes­sage in the chain pre­sent­ed to the Com­mis­sion comes from Chow at 4.30 am.

“Did it im­pact the ris­er?” she writes in re­sponse to mes­sages from Flem­ing Hold­er.

Her mes­sage was the last of 26 pages of screen­shots pre­sent­ed to the Com­mis­sion.


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