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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

When did the divers die? 

by

1221 days ago
20220306

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

 

Four hours. That’s the time it took for res­cue ves­sels to ar­rive at Berth No 6 to pro­vide cam­era, ro­bot­ic and div­er sup­port, af­ter five divers dis­ap­peared in­side a 30-inch di­am­e­ter pipeline on Feb­ru­ary 25.

Why it took so long is one of the ques­tions to be an­swered when the Shiv Shar­ma In­ves­ti­gat­ing Com­mit­tee be­gins its probe of the trag­ic deaths of four of the divers—Yusuff Hen­ry, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Kaz­im Ali Ju­nior.

To­mor­row, an­oth­er in­ter­est­ing piece of ev­i­dence will be un­cov­ered when the au­top­sy on the body of Na­gas­sar re­veals his time of death. He was the last div­er to be pulled from the No 36 Searis­er pipeline. The first three bod­ies were re­cov­ered around 6 pm on Mon­day.

Au­top­sies done on the bod­ies of Hen­ry and Kur­ban re­vealed that death was due to drown­ing. Na­gas­sar’s body was found at 12.35 am on Thurs­day but un­like the oth­er divers, it was in­tact and de­com­po­si­tion had not set in. This has led rel­a­tives to be­lieve that he was the last to die.

Was it pos­si­ble he had found an air pock­et and was wait­ing for res­cue? Were the oth­er divers still alive when Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives held a press con­fer­ence say­ing they were dead on Sun­day night? These are some of the ques­tions the com­mit­tee will an­swer.

 

Un­der­wa­ter cam­era
footage cru­cial

Footage tak­en from in­side the pipeline will form a cru­cial part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Kaz­im Ali Jr, whose fa­ther Kaz­im Ali Sr owns LM­CS, had gone in­to the pipeline to cap­ture footage of the seabed line. LM­CS is the firm con­tract­ed to do main­te­nance work on the pipeline by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny.

When a vor­tex was cre­at­ed and the rush of wa­ter be­gan suck­ing the divers fur­ther in­to the pipeline around 3 pm, the team above the sur­face knew some­thing had gone wrong. Con­trac­tor per­son­nel no­ticed suc­tion on the wa­ter sur­face an hour af­ter the div­ing op­er­a­tions start­ed at 2 pm. A stand­by div­er en­tered the wa­ter but did not see any of the divers. For two and a half hours, no oth­er div­er went in. Why? And what was hap­pen­ing dur­ing this pe­ri­od is al­so cru­cial to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion?

At 5.30 pm, a cer­ti­fied div­er en­tered the pipeline to at­tempt a res­cue al­though a se­nior Paria of­fi­cial tried to stop him. Christo­pher Boodram was res­cued and there was good rea­son to go back in and save the oth­er divers but that was not al­lowed. Why did Paria of­fi­cials abort the res­cue mis­sion? That is an­oth­er mat­ter the com­mit­tee has to probe.

Footage of Kaz­im Ali Jr’s cam­era, which is be­lieved to have been found, will be cru­cial to the Shiv Shar­ma In­ves­ti­gat­ing Com­mit­tee.

At a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia asked at­tor­ney Prakash Ra­mad­har whether the LCMS mon­i­tor­ing team had ev­i­dence of what tran­spired be­low. Ra­mad­har said yes and added that his team has al­ready gath­ered ev­i­dence to iden­ti­fy the per­son who made the de­ci­sion not to al­low oth­er cer­ti­fied divers to go back in­to the wa­ter.

 

What hap­pened af­ter Fri­day?

Un­der­wa­ter ro­bot­ics equip­ment probed the pipeline for hours on Fri­day night. At 11 am on Sat­ur­day, there were re­ports that the res­cue ves­sels had en­coun­tered ob­sta­cles 100 feet in­to the pipeline. The tox­ic fumes could have killed the men un­less they had found air pock­ets in the line. It was then that res­cue ves­sels were called off.

Two hours lat­er, at mid­day on Sat­ur­day, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and se­nior of­fi­cials of Paria, in­clud­ing Mush­taq Mo­hammed, Michael Wei and New­man George, met with the divers’ fam­i­lies at Paria’s staff club.

Young an­nounced then that pump­ing will start in two hours.  But it was not un­til ten hours lat­er that the diesel pump ar­rived on site. Why did it take so long? An­oth­er ques­tion for the com­mit­tee to probe.

There are re­ports that the res­cue op­er­a­tion was de­layed by the late is­su­ing of work per­mits. Paria ex­ec­u­tives were con­cerned about fac­ing li­a­bil­i­ty and did not think pre­cious time was be­ing wast­ed by bu­reau­cra­cy, Ra­mad­har said.

On Sun­day at 2 am, dur­ing an at­tempt to re­move the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber with the crane, the equip­ment mal­func­tioned and a new crane had to be mo­bilised to move the cham­ber. Was Kaz­im Ali Jr’s cam­era found at that time? Up to 3 pm on that day, the op­er­a­tion was still con­sid­ered a res­cue mis­sion. How­ev­er, at 8 pm on Sun­day, Paria ex­ec­u­tives an­nounced that the men were dead and it was now a re­cov­ery op­er­a­tion. Rel­a­tives were not in­formed be­fore­hand.

 

What this ex­pert be­lieves

In­dus­tri­al ex­pert and for­mer su­per­in­ten­dent of Area West Vish­nu Ram­jat­tan knows the Paria pipelines in­side out. Ram­jat­tan, who was head of Area West, the ju­ris­dic­tion of Berths No 5 and 6, be­lieves the men were al­ready dead by Sat­ur­day.

He said the line con­tains tox­ic fumes and when he first heard about the in­ci­dent at 9 pm on Fri­day, he spent sev­en hours try­ing to call his col­leagues to lend his ex­per­tise on how the men could be saved. When his fran­tic calls went unan­swered, Ram­jat­tan spec­u­lat­ed they were dead.

He said based on his ex­pe­ri­ence, there were two rea­sons which could cause the men to be pulled in­to the pipeline. One is an ex­treme back­wash from an on­com­ing ves­sel or the re­moval of an ex­pan­sion plug which would cre­ate a rush of wa­ter as the men worked in the hy­per­bar­ic cham­ber which was built to al­low them to safe­ly do main­te­nance works.

Ram­jat­tan said he is will­ing to as­sist in any way he can. He drew a se­ries of di­a­grams to show what hap­pens in the ex­e­cu­tion of such works.

 

An­swers need­ed

Min­is­ter Young has asked the coun­try to give the com­mit­tee a chance to do its work in­de­pen­dent­ly. In the mean­time, all ma­jor projects and non-rou­tine op­er­a­tions at Paria have been sus­pend­ed. Op­er­a­tions are lim­it­ed to rou­tine main­te­nance.

Young said an ex­ter­nal in­de­pen­dent re­view will be done on all risk as­sess­ments, meth­ods, state­ments, haz­ard analy­sis be­fore the au­tho­ri­sa­tion of work per­mits in­ter­nal­ly at Paria in­clud­ed when deal­ing with sub­con­trac­tors.

All con­trac­tor em­ploy­ees and safe­ty ori­en­ta­tions will be re-done to en­sure safe­ty pro­to­cols are up­held and fol­lowed. LM­CS has been re­moved from the site and tak­en off all work. Ra­mad­har and his team are rep­re­sent­ing the in­ter­ests of Boodram and the fam­i­lies of Fyzal Kur­ban and Yusuff Hen­ry. Vanes­sa Kussie, the com­mon-law wife of Na­gas­sar, is wait­ing to see what the au­top­sy re­veals. The OW­TU and at­tor­ney Ra­mad­har want Paria ex­ec­u­tives to step down. The rest of the coun­try is await­ing an­swers.


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