Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the death of a 43-year-old work­er who was crushed by a Ju­nior Sam­my ce­ment truck at the com­pa­ny’s Clax­ton Bay work­site yes­ter­day.

Po­lice iden­ti­fied the de­ceased work­er as Dami­an Ram­cha­ran, of Phoenix Park, Cou­va.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that around 10 am, he was walk­ing in front of a parked ce­ment truck when it sud­den­ly rolled for­ward, pin­ning him un­der­neath it.

He was re­trieved by co-work­ers and tak­en to the Cou­va Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, an of­fi­cial at the Ju­nior Sam­my Group at Sum Sum Hill in­di­cat­ed they would not com­ment on the in­ci­dent un­til they get the full facts and pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be done at the San Fer­nan­do mor­tu­ary.

Cou­va po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

Miss­ing rig work­er’s fam­i­ly hold prayer ses­sion

Yes­ter­day’s job­site ac­ci­dent comes even as rel­a­tives of miss­ing rig work­er Pe­te Phillip pre­pare to ho­n­our him for what will be his 46th birth­day to­day, by ven­tur­ing out at sea near the wreck­age where his body is sub­merged to of­fer prayers. The fa­ther of five was among 75 per­son­nel aboard Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed Rig 110 in Her­itage Off­shore East Field on De­cem­ber 22, 2024, when it par­tial­ly col­lapsed at 3 am. One per­son was in­jured, while Phillip could not be found.

Well Ser­vices said re­cent­ly that it knew where Phillip’s body was lo­cat­ed but was work­ing on a safe re­cov­ery. The fam­i­ly had hoped his body would have been re­cov­ered in time for a fu­ner­al ser­vice on his birth­day to­day. In­stead, the fam­i­ly will con­duct a prayer ser­vice.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Phillip’s wife Can­da­cy said she would be un­able to at­tend.

“I wouldn’t be go­ing be­cause of my con­di­tion and the preg­nan­cy and the wa­ter and all that. But they will be do­ing prayers out on the boat.”

Phillip’s el­dest son, age 18, will ac­com­pa­ny his rel­a­tives to­day.

His wife said she has not yet re­ceived any feed­back from the com­pa­ny about when op­er­a­tions will re­sume to re­cov­er his body.

“They did say with­in a week’s time, which is sup­posed to be by week­end. I’m pray­ing we get that clo­sure,” Can­da­cy said.

She’s ex­pect­ing to give birth to a bounc­ing ba­by boy at the end of next month.

Mean­while, Phillip’s moth­er Pa­tri­cia Phillip, who was on va­ca­tion abroad when she re­ceived the trag­ic news, said she and some of her oth­er chil­dren will be among 12 rel­a­tives go­ing out to the rig at 10 am. She said Well Ser­vices has arranged a shut­tle to take them to Point Fortin.

“We hav­ing just a lil ser­vice, a lil prayer, noth­ing much.”

The moth­er of ten said Phillip was her sixth child.

“I just hop­ing that they will get him, it’s so long al­ready, too long and I just hope that they get him out be­fore month-end.”

On De­cem­ber 26, Well Ser­vices is­sued an up­date stat­ing that ef­forts have been tran­si­tioned from search and res­cue op­er­a­tions to a search and re­cov­ery phase. In a state­ment on Jan­u­ary 9, Well Ser­vices said it be­lieved Phillip’s body was lo­cat­ed but op­er­a­tions were tem­porar­i­ly paused to en­sure site safe­ty.

Well Ser­vices said it was ac­tive­ly se­cur­ing spe­cialised equip­ment, in­clud­ing heavy-lift barge and crane barges, to sup­port the op­er­a­tion. The com­pa­ny added that a com­pre­hen­sive safe­ty plan was be­ing de­vel­oped and would be sub­mit­ted to OS­HA.

OS­HA has since said the com­pa­ny does not need to sub­mit any res­cue plan to the agency but does need to no­ti­fy them when they plan to un­der­take the re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions so that OS­HA can en­sure that ev­i­dence at the site is not com­pro­mised as the in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the in­ci­dent are still on­go­ing.