Up to yesterday afternoon, Demerara Oxygen Company Ltd (DOCOL) employees Heera Persaud of Leonora and Rabindranauth Ramdhani also of Leonora were patients of the High Dependency Unit at St Joseph Mercy Hospital after suffering burns in an explosion at their workplace on Friday. Mirvel Richards of Bagostville, another employee, was in the male ward of the same hospital.
According to a fire official a spark ignited gas where they were engaged in refilling.
Relatives who saw the injured employees said they were badly burnt and are likely to be hospitalized for some time. Doctors are yet to provide a full medical report on the condition of the employees, but Persaud and Ramdhani reportedly suffered severe burns.
“He look different… ah look at he face and it dark, dark,” Indrapattie Ramdhani the mother of Rabindranauth told Stabroek News yesterday at the hospital.
The woman, a worried look on her face, related that her son looked strange when she first encountered him at the hospital. She said that Rabindranauth, 19, started working at the company a few months ago.
The woman said she has accepted that it was an accident and according to her, the company has been “very supportive.” She said DOCOL was there from the beginning, informing the family of the accident, and that representatives have been at the hospital “throughout.” She said her son appears to have been burnt badly.
Rita Persaud also had trouble recognizing her son Heera. “He look so different to me,” she said yesterday. Persaud said that Heera, aged 22 years, had joined DOCOL in January and had no complaints about the working conditions. She said the “accident he get in” resulted in burns all over his body – his back, both arms, knees, abdomen and also his face.
According to Persaud, her son was barely speaking when they visited him but she expects him to come around soon. She said the family has not yet enquired from him what happened, but that “the company said it was an accident.”
She said too that DOCOL has been in the family’s corner since they received word of what happened.
Stabroek News also spoke with Colin Richards who said his son Mirvel was “badly burnt.” He said that Mirvel,19, recalled fetching a cylinder which was leaking with two other employees. The cylinder subsequently exploded when they decided to put it down. Richards said that his son could be in hospital for a short while because of the extent of the burns.
“He is not as badly affected as the other two boys, but he got a lot of burns,” Richards told this newspaper. He too said that the company has been supportive.
Meanwhile a senior fire official told Stabroek News yesterday that the injured men are claiming that there was a spark preceding the explosion.
He said that initial investigations have revealed that the three employees were refilling gas when something created a spark and ignited the gas.
He assured this newspaper that the Fire Department was investigating the matter but may have to wait some time to allow the injured to recover.
The official said that when the two fire tenders arrived at DOCOL on Friday afternoon there was still a fire which fire fighters managed to get under control.
He explained that the explosion had ruptured a gas line which had started to leak.
According to the official from all indications, it was an accident.
