Big
oil blow-out sickens 60
By Richard Charan, South Bureau
Trinidad Express
Port
Spain
Petroleumworldtt.com
11 12 06
An
oil well blow-out sent 60 people to hospital yesterday.
Crude
covered the rooftops of several homes and 12 families
fled soon after the midnight explosion.
Trees
around the well at Diggity Trace, off Clarke Road,
Penal, were blackened and flattened by spewing oil.
Residents
said the blow-out sounded like "a hundred fireworks
going off at the same time."
Some
200 people living downwind of the site were said
to be affected by the smell of a mixture of oil
and natural gas.
Residents,
who complained of nausea, stomach pain, burning
eyes and difficulty in breathing, were treated and
allowed to return home by State-owned oil company
Petrotrin's doctors, who were taken to the Penal
Health Centre.
But
there was no help for the oil-covered ducks owned
by farmer Errol Heeradan, or for the goat belonging
to infant sisters Crystal and Carmalita Stanley.
The girls wept when it died.
Petrotrin's
communication's officer, Walford Coker, said the
company was moving fast to return the area to "a
pristine environment."
He
said: "The well blew out horizontally which
was lucky for us. Our medical people were here from
5 a.m. and we provided ambulances to take these
people to the health centre".
The
well was repaired at 7.30 a.m. but because the oil
blanketed a large area, the company trucked in water
for residents and provided food.
Officials
from the company's legal department were also assessing
damage done to homes and property.
There
are several tapped-out oil wells in Penal that are
being brought back on production through new technology.
Heeradan,
57, lives closest to the blown well.
He
said was awakened by the "bomb" and never
stopped running until he was "out the road".
"Around
midnight, I hear the boom and this noise. I first
thought it was oil going into the storage tanks.
But then I got the smell. I couldn't handle it".
It
was about 100 feet from his bedroom, Heeradan said.
"I
see the thing spewing 50 feet in the air. I blow
out my kerosene lamp and mosquito coil and I run
like a bullet. I tell my neighbours it look like
this thing could explode. We got out the area. I
was frightened like hell."
From
her hill-top home near the well, Jayanti Nagessar
said her three children and husband fled their home
long before fire-fighters arrived and began ordering
people to evacuate.
The
well blew two days after a contractor cleaned it
and installed a new valve. An investigation is being
done to find out why the equipment failed, and Coker
said the clean up of homes has started.
Trinidad
Express
Thursday, November 9th 2006
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