Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Five of the nine fam­i­lies evac­u­at­ed fol­low­ing the oil spill in Fyz­abad will be al­lowed to re­turn to their homes to­day.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um of­fi­cials yes­ter­day met with the nine fam­i­lies at the Paria Suites Ho­tel in La Ro­main, where the fam­i­lies were re­lo­cat­ed ear­li­er this week.

Four of the fam­i­lies clos­est to the oil spill, caused by two leaks along a 16-inch pipeline in the Mas­sa­hood Junc­tion com­mu­ni­ty on May 14, were the first to be evac­u­at­ed by the com­pa­ny. Two days lat­er, on May 16, five more fam­i­lies were evac­u­at­ed as they be­gan feel­ing un­well due to hy­dro­car­bons in the at­mos­phere.

Three com­pa­ny of­fi­cials ar­rived at the ho­tel around 3 pm yes­ter­day, to­geth­er with med­ical per­son­nel. They of­fered free blood work and check-ups to the af­fect­ed res­i­dents. They al­so dis­cussed com­pen­sa­tion for var­i­ous items, in­clud­ing loss of in­come.

How­ev­er, the of­fi­cials stressed that the fam­i­lies must pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port claims for com­pen­sa­tion.

Nadeem Ali, who is stay­ing at the ho­tel with his wife and two-year-old daugh­ter, was sat­is­fied with the com­pa­ny’s re­sponse thus far.

“They are work­ing with us and seem to be do­ing what is right,” he said.

Re­gard­ing when they will be al­lowed to re­turn to their homes, he said the five fam­i­lies were ad­vised to re­turn to their homes to­day around 8 am.

“They told them to open their doors and win­dows in case there is resid­ual fumes.”

If there is any is­sue, he said the res­i­dents might re­turn to the ho­tel, but they should be back in their homes this week­end.

Mean­while, Ali does not know when his fam­i­ly, and the oth­er three fam­i­lies will be al­lowed to re­turn to their homes.

Her­itage con­firmed a med­ical team vis­it­ed the res­i­dents at the ho­tel and that clean-up op­er­a­tions are con­tin­u­ing.