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Massive oil spill near Trinidad and Tobago blamed on barge being tugged
A preliminary investigation into a mushrooming oil spill in waters near Trinidad and Tobago has found that an overturned and abandoned barge blamed for the disaster was being tugged to nearby Guyana.
Officials in the eastern Caribbean island nation are trying to determine the owner of the vessel after last week’s spill coated beaches along Tobago’s southern coast and forced at least two schools to close over health concerns.
Prime Minister Keith Rowley said last week that the country was grappling with a national emergency.
Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard, with help from regional agencies and satellite images, determined that the barge and a tug boat were traveling from Panama to the South American nation of Guyana, the National Security Ministry said Wednesday.
CLEMENT WILLIAMS/AFP via Getty Images
Foreign maritime security investigators also are helping with the ongoing probe, officials said.
Officials have said it was not clear if anybody was aboard the barge when it overturned and apparently began to sink off Tobago’s coast. They are still searching for the tug boat and its owner. The mystery ship made no emergency calls, with no sign of crew and no clear indication of ownership.
The spill has angered many residents of the twin-island nation.
Farley Augustine, chief secretary of Tobago’s House of Assembly, demanded that the owner of the barge step forward and pay for the cleanup.
“We have a lot of questions, and now is the best time to have those questions answered,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Tobago Emergency Management Agency
“We need to know the quantity and the material you were transporting, so we know what we have been dealing with, what we have been walking in, what we have been swimming in, what we have been trying to clean up from our shores,” Augustine said.
National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds said the investigation is continuing. “We look forward to a swift and successful resolution,” he said.
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The number of people killed and/or wounded in shootings over the Fourth of July week in the U.S. dipped this year, making it the fourth year in a row gun violence around July 4 has dropped, according to a tally by the Gun Violence Archive.
From July 1 to July 7, 340 people were killed and 756 were wounded for a total of 1,096 shooting victims across the U.S., according to the Gun Violence Archive. In 2023, the week of July 4 in the U.S. saw 451 people shot and killed and another 1,130 wounded. These numbers exclude those who died by suicide.
The archive also recorded 20 mass shootings —which it defines as a shooting in which four or more people are shot and/or killed, not including the shooter— over Fourth of July week this year. That was down from 28 a year ago.
Chicago, which saw a spike in gun violence this year, had the most shootings and deaths over the 2024 holiday, with more than 100 shot and 19 killed since Wednesday, according to the Chicago Police Department. That was a 91% increase in shooting victims compared with last year.
In 2022, the Illinois suburb of Highland Park was the site of a devastating mass shooting in which seven people were killed and dozens more were wounded when a gunman opened fire on the city’s Fourth of July parade. That parade returned this year for the first time since the shooting.
Gun violence in Chicago made Illinois have the most individual shooting incidents of any state over the holiday week this year. California also saw a fairly high number of shooting incidents this year, which is unsurprising given that it is the nation’s most populous state.
The number of shooting victims over the Fourth of July week has been dropping every year since 2020, but they still remain above 2019 levels. That year, there were 1,177 total victims, with 318 deaths and another 859 people wounded. The numbers then spiked in 2020, when 536 people were killed and 1,172 were wounded, for a total of 1,708 gunshot victims.
The Gun Violence Archive also recorded 34 mass shootings in 2020, the highest number over the last six years and a leap up from 18 in 2019.
The U.S. has also seen a slight dip in gun violence overall in the first half of 2024 compared with last year. From Jan. 1 through June 30 of last year, 9,683 people were killed and 18,630 people were wounded in shootings. Over that same period this year, 8,539 were killed with another 16,192 were wounded.
— Erin Cauchi and Anna Schechter contributed reporting.
