On day one of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the deaths of four divers at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing’s off­shore fa­cil­i­ty in Pointe-a-Pierre on Feb­ru­ary 25, chill­ing in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing their or­deal has al­ready been dis­closed.

The record­ing of the last con­ver­sa­tions be­tween the men, while trapped in a 30-inch pipeline, has re­vived trau­ma that many faced in the af­ter­math of this tragedy.

But it was nec­es­sary that it be played.

What was clear from the way they spoke, was that these men were, at that mo­ment, not yet in a des­per­ate pan­ic mode as they tried to lo­cate each oth­er and to help each oth­er out.

From the man­ner in which they con­versed, it was ev­i­dent that they felt help was ei­ther com­ing or that an es­cape was pos­si­ble.

Sad­ly, nei­ther of these two sce­nar­ios ma­te­ri­alised and this is ex­act­ly why the Com­mis­sion is meet­ing to­day.

Al­so re­vealed yes­ter­day were pathol­o­gist re­ports that sug­gest­ed the men might have been alive for many hours af­ter they were sucked in­to the pipe, with one of them, Rishi Na­gas­sar, pos­si­bly re­main­ing there for as many as three days be­fore he died.

This is as trag­ic as it gets and once again rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about the ef­forts to res­cue them.

Yes­ter­day, Coun­sel to the Com­mis­sion, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, said the con­trac­tors for which the divers worked, LM­CS, had an ini­tial res­cue plan at 3.20 pm on Feb­ru­ary 25 that in­volved divers with scu­ba equip­ment go­ing to save the four men.

Based on LM­CS’ sub­mis­sion, Mr Ma­haraj said this plan was lat­er re­vised at 6.20 pm to in­volve pump­ing sur­face air in­to the pipeline to fa­cil­i­tate the res­cue, but he not­ed that LM­CS had al­so sub­mit­ted in its ev­i­dence that Paria pre­vent­ed it from im­ple­ment­ing the res­cue plan on the grounds that it was un­safe.

These claims had been dis­put­ed by Paria in March and the com­pa­ny will present its po­si­tion to the com­mis­sion­ers.

We ea­ger­ly await the truth on this mat­ter, as it re­mains deeply con­cern­ing that proof of life as­sess­ments and res­cue plans failed these men over such an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time.

The Com­mis­sion is du­ty-bound to probe well in­to the depths of Paria’s safe­ty poli­cies and prac­tis­es to de­ter­mine if there were re­sponse pro­to­cols in place for such an ac­ci­dent; what those pro­to­cols were; if they were fol­lowed; and why they failed in get­ting the men out alive.

We are glad to hear that Mr Ma­haraj and the Com­mis­sion al­so in­tend to de­ter­mine whether crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings could be launched against any per­son or en­ti­ty, and whether such a rec­om­men­da­tion should be made to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions.

This Com­mis­sion has done well in set­ting the right tone as it be­gins pub­lic sit­tings.

These deaths shook the en­tire na­tion, and many ques­tions went unan­swered as a blame game en­sued be­tween Paria and LM­CS.

We’re con­fi­dent that the Com­mis­sion, as it is cur­rent­ly con­sti­tut­ed, is one that will get to the bot­tom of this mat­ter, and we look for­ward to those re­spon­si­ble for this tragedy be­ing held ac­count­able for their ac­tions or lack there­of.