Sailor burnt after fuel vessel bursts into flames

Mar 12, 2010 News

A 27-year-old sailor is presently nursing burns about his body after the fuel vessel he was working on caught fire while off loading kerosene at the Texaco Wharf at Bartica yesterday.
Deoraj Sanmogan, of Vreed-en-Hoop, West Coast Demerara was attending to the fuel pump when it burst into flames at around 07:00 hours.
The flames caught on to Sanmogan’s clothes and he panicked and plunged into the river.
He was rescued by a passing speedboat and rushed to the Bartica Hospital from where he was transported to the city for further medical attention.
The captain of ‘Mother Ganga’, which is owned by a West Demerara businessman, had also plunged overboard when he saw the cabin on fire.
However, quick work by attendants at the fuel station averted a major disaster.
Using fire extinguishers, they managed to put out the blaze and subsequently took the vessel to midstream until personnel from the fledgling Bartica Fire Service arrived two hours later.
Speaking to Kaieteur News yesterday, manager of the fuel station, Paramdial Doobay, who is popularly known as Pandit, said that the vessel arrived at Bartica on Wednesday night but waited until yesterday morning to discharge its load of fuel in the safety of daylight.
He said that the two-man crew comprising the captain and Sanmogan had already discharged gasoline and had offloaded half of the kerosene when tragedy struck.
According to Doobay, he was at the front of the fuel station and by the time he went to the back where the fuel was being offloaded, the Mother Ganga’s cabin was already on fire.
He said that he was told that the pump which was being used to off load the fuel malfunctioned and Sanmogan was trying to rectify the problem when the fire started.
“The Captain said that he was in the cabin when he heard the engine stop. He said when he checked, he saw the fire,” Doobay related.
However he lamented the absence of proper fire fighting facilities in Bartica.
The fuel station manager pointed out that a fire station has been built in the community but it is only manned by an auxiliary staff.
“By the time they arrived, it was already 9 o’clock, two hours after the fire started,” Doobay stated.
Yesterday, several relatives of the burnt sailor turned up at the hospital, anxious to know about his condition, which is listed as serious.

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Sailor burnt after fuel vessel bursts into flames

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