For the not too young, the sound of yes­ter­day’s ex­plo­sion on the com­pound of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery brought flash­backs of the dead­ly blast in June 1991.

Hours af­ter fire­fight­ers ex­tin­guished the blaze at Ni­Quan En­er­gy’s Gas-to-Liq­uids plant in­side the re­fin­ery com­pound, Mara­bel­la res­i­dents whose homes bor­der the es­tate were still pan­ick­ing.

In Silk Cot­ton Dri­ve, where on­ly the Guaracara Riv­er sep­a­rates the com­mu­ni­ty from the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd’s com­pound, Kee­shawn Elms crept around his yard, hold­ing his one-month-old daugh­ter. Elms told Guardian Me­dia that the child woke up scream­ing around 6.30 am af­ter the blast shook his home.

For hours she cried, and he planned to take her to the Mara­bel­la Health Cen­tre to see if she suf­fered any trau­ma.

“We were see­ing about the chil­dren, and my Madame was or­gan­is­ing when we heard the noise. The whole morn­ing, the child cried. It sound­ed dif­fer­ent, the whole house, the roof shook. Her moth­er had to com­fort her by tak­ing some­thing and cov­er­ing her ears. We walked her around the yard to cool her down. Then we saw the smoke across there, so we thought there was a fire. We re­al­ly did not know what was go­ing on,” Elms said.

Up to mid­day, res­i­dents said no of­fi­cials came to the com­mu­ni­ty to in­form them what hap­pened and whether they should evac­u­ate. Chavon Red­head said no one told them that there was a plant op­er­at­ing on the com­pound. As far as res­i­dents knew, Petrotrin shut down the re­fin­ery in De­cem­ber 2018. Dur­ing Petrotrin days, there were safe­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols in case of an emer­gency. Noth­ing ex­ists now, res­i­dents said.

Red­head said his 92-year-old grand­moth­er be­gan hold­ing her chest af­ter the ex­plo­sion. See­ing her trau­ma, he said he was wor­ried about fur­ther ex­plo­sions at the plant.

Across at Sixth Street Ex­ten­sion, Car­men Nar­ine re­mem­bers vivid­ly the fear she felt when the Flu­idised Cat­alyt­ic Crack­ing Unit at the then Trin­toc Re­fin­ery ex­plod­ed on June 5, 1991. Af­ter liv­ing through that fright­en­ing or­deal, yes­ter­day’s blast left her shak­ing.

“I was sleep­ing this morn­ing, and all of a sud­den, be­tween sleep and wake, I heard a loud noise. It was like my whole house was tum­bling down. I flew off the bed and said it has to be Petrotrin. I opened the win­dow, but I did not see any­thing,” Nar­ine said. 

Af­ter run­ning out of the house, she found her chil­dren sit­ting out­side. They thought it was an earth­quake and were await­ing the af­ter­shocks. But Nar­ine said that she nev­er heard an earth­quake sound like that, al­though her home rocked. Lat­er on, her cousin told her there was an ex­plo­sion on the plant.

“This made me re­mem­ber 1991 when the cat crack­er caught on fire. I was strong asleep, and my chil­dren jumped on top of me and asked me what was that? I said, ‘the flam­beau fell’. I got up stu­pid.”

She sat un­der her house with her grand­chil­dren, check­ing her phone oc­ca­sion­al­ly for re­ports of ca­su­al­ties. Af­ter the 1991 event, she knew lives were al­ways at risk. With no com­mu­ni­ca­tion from com­pa­ny of­fi­cials, Nar­ine was wor­ried about whether her fam­i­ly would have to evac­u­ate. She said her hus­band Tir­ben­ny was an am­putee, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to flee in an emer­gency.

Per­son­nel on the com­pounds of the Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny and Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny evac­u­at­ed as po­lice, army, and fire­fight­ers cor­doned off the area be­tween Plai­sance Park and the TECU build­ing in Mara­bel­la. Mo­torists had to use the Solomon Ho­choy High­way to by­pass the area. 

Ni­Quan of­fi­cials said the hy­dro­c­rack­er at the plant blew, which led to the blast and fire.

How­ev­er, there were no ca­su­al­ties, and by mid-morn­ing, fire­fight­ers con­tained the fire and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said there was no ac­tive dan­ger to life or prop­er­ty in the im­me­di­ate vicin­i­ty.

Res­i­dents in Mara­bel­la, Clax­ton Bay, Palmiste, Pointe-a-Pierre and Gas­par­il­lo re­port­ed feel­ing the shock from the blast, while oth­ers liv­ing fur­ther said they heard it.

A few busi­ness­es with­in the emer­gency zone, in­clud­ing those at Trop­i­cal Plaza, had to shut down and evac­u­ate for sev­er­al hours. Even the street food ven­dors lost out on the morn­ing sales.