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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Some oil spill victims return to homes today

by

Sascha Wilson
786 days ago
20230518
Residents of Massahood Village in Fyzabad relax at the Paria Suites Hotel in La Romain on Wednesday, after they were evacuated from their homes when a Heritage Petroleum Company Limited pipeline burst on Sunday.

Residents of Massahood Village in Fyzabad relax at the Paria Suites Hotel in La Romain on Wednesday, after they were evacuated from their homes when a Heritage Petroleum Company Limited pipeline burst on Sunday.

RISHI RAGOONATH

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.


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