by Kevon Felmine (Trinidad Guardian) While several diving experts gathered at Paria Fuel Trading Company Ltd on February 25, none attempted to rescue the five LMCS divers who got sucked into a 30-inch diameter pipeline because the task was too risky.
Giving evidence at the Commissioner of Enquiry (CoE) into the Paria/LMCS Diving Tragedy yesterday, Paria’s Technical and Maintenance Manager Michael Wei said some 14 hours after Christopher Boodram emerged from Sealine 36, the company had still been considering rescuing the men.
Boodram is the lone survivor of the accident, which occurred as the divers were doing subsea maintenance work on the pipeline at Berth 6 in the Pointe-a-Pierre harbour.
While Boodram was removing an inflatable plug with his colleagues Fyzal Kurban, Yusuf Henry, Kazim Ali Jr and Rishi Nagassar, a Delta P incident occurred, sucking them into the pipeline.
