The explosion at El Pecos in Maraval had unwelcome echoes in a disturbingly similar blast and fire exactly one year later at Kleen Rite Dry Cleaners, on Mucurapo Road, on February 5.
At both incidents, the cause was gas leakage during a delivery of LPG from the same supplier, North Plant LPG, and the driver of the vehicle was the same person, Neville Rampersad.
North Plant is the minority supplier of LPG in the local market, delivering up to 20 per cent of the gas locally. Its competitor, Ramco, delivers the rest.
North Plant has said nothing about either matter.
The Ministry of Energy and Energy Affairs, which recently set up a committee to investigate both incidents, has set no deadline for its findings, and the destruction of Kleen Rite and its business neighbour, a very flammable paint retail shop, are the ash-covered remains should stand as mute testimony to the need for brisk action in reviewing these explosions.
The explosion at El Pecos injured 11 people, mortally injured John Soo Ping Chow, who died of his injuries four months later at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, and cost the owners of the restaurant $2.1 million in damage, loss of stocks and loss of earnings before it reopened.
There are clear questions arising from this matter, but there has been no apparent haste in taking action on what is known about the destruction, injury and death at the El Pecos location and the price for that has been the obliteration of two more businesses in parallel circumstances.
Nobody was killed at the second explosion and injuries were minimal, but that’s just luck, not a result of the preventive action that the first explosion warranted.
The official Fire Service investigation into the explosion reported nothing that wasn’t already known on the pavement at Saddle Road as smoke poured from the remains of El Pecos.
The results of tests on samples from the nozzle of the LPG delivery hose suspected of creating sparks that ignited the explosion are still to be delivered by the Forensic Science Centre.
Clearly, standards need to be set, procedures need to be revised and those in authority need to make their expectations of safety clear to the suppliers of potentially dangerous payloads.
The Ministry of Energy has clear guidelines for safety in the procedure of delivering LPG and the OSH Act offers general guidelines for safety in the handling of these flammable products, but it’s unclear whether there are enough inspectors available to review these procedures or if such inspectors are trained and qualified to find the type of lapses that lead to deadly errors.
Should the Ministry of Energy, the Occupational Health and Safety Authority, the Fire Service and the Bureau of Standards successfully navigate this apparent morass of bureaucracy to craft a clearly thought-through, readily enforceable and robustly safety-focused document to guide future management of the delivery of LPG in Trinidad and Tobago; there remains the issue of enforcement.
It’s shameful that one year to the day after the El Pecos explosion, the same thing happened again, but it would be inexcusable for the authorities charged with public safety in this matter to continue to allow what seems to be a ticking bomb to continue to slip between earnest fingers unable to come to grips with the problem.
The Energy Ministry must insist on a thorough, complete and brisk investigation into these two destructive explosions and follow up with changes in process, procedure and accountability that insist on greater safety in LPG handling.