4 divers die after being sucked into pipe

Four of a team of five underwater welders in Trinidad have been presumed dead after being sucked into the oil pipeline on which they had been using scuba to carry out repairs.

Update: Diver pipeline deaths blamed on oil company’s ’criminal negligence’

The incident occurred at around 3pm on Friday (25 February) and, according to local press, relatives of the missing men have accused the oil company and emergency services of dragging their feet over the subsequent rescue operation.

This youtube video has some of the gopro footage in it including when they’re in the pipe in the pitch black.

The divers worked for service company LMCS, which had been contracted by Paria Fuel Trading Co Ltd to carry out the routine maintenance work. The location was Pointe-a-Pierre, a town in the west of Trinidad on the Gulf of Paria and the site of the island’s biggest oil refinery. 

The scuba divers were at a depth of 18m, installing a riser on a 90cm-bore pipe that ran about 400m from shore to a berth out at sea. They had almost completed the task when a safety valve that had enabled them to work on the pipe is believed to have opened suddenly, causing a powerful vacuum effect that sucked all five of them inside.

Rescued by relatives

Divers Kazim Ali Jr (whose father is managing director of LMCS), team-leader Fyzal Kurban (57), Yuseph Henry (31) and Rishi Nagassar (48) remain missing today (28 February), while the fifth, Christopher Boodram, was rescued by relatives. 

Badly bruised but said to be in a stable condition after spending time in a hospital hyperbaric chamber, Boodram reported that after being dragged into the pipe he had seen other divers in an air-pocket. One of them had been injured and was unable to move. 

Kurban’s son Michael, also a diver, was working nearby on his boat when he heard an emergency call on the radio and rushed to the site. Finding no search underway, he took the initiative and called his brother, an uncle and a friend, all divers, to help. 

Diving on an umbilical he found Boodram about 15m inside the pipe, covered in oil. He was able to help him out, and the others brought him to the surface. 

The men described hearing sounds from further along the pipeline, and Michael Kurban went back in search of his father, but found only dive-gear. He was unable to proceed further because he was limited by the length of his umbilical. 

He claimed that his volunteer team had been willing to continue searching but were prevented on the grounds that they were contravening health and safety protocols. 

Air-pockets

Paria stated that the missing divers had been monitored from the surface while they were working and that when the incident occurred it had immediately contacted the Coast Guard and other authorities, and had rescue divers standing by. 

In turn the relatives claimed that Paria had not even sent remote cameras into the pipe until some 12 hours after the initial incident, and that rescue divers had been unwilling to enter the pipe until the contents had been pumped out. They have also told press that Paria and the authorities had failed to keep them informed of developments. 

Over the weekend some hope remained that air-pockets might have enabled the missing divers to survive, even though the air quality was likely to have been poor. According to one report, rescue attempts had been delayed by an attempt to position a water pump that failed when its lifting cable snapped.

On Sunday night Paria’s chairman Newman George stated that further actions would now constitute a recovery operation, using water displacement to move the divers’ bodies along the pipe.