Res­i­dents of Tarou­ba Heights say they re­main in the dark days af­ter Thurs­day’s oil spill, al­leg­ing lim­it­ed di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um even as a lin­ger­ing hy­dro­car­bon odour, clean-up ac­tiv­i­ty and health con­cerns con­tin­ue to af­fect parts of the com­mu­ni­ty.

When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the com­mu­ni­ty near re­cent­ly re­placed pipelines along the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, some res­i­dents who had evac­u­at­ed had not yet re­turned, while oth­ers re­mained in­side with doors and win­dows sealed to keep out the smell of oil. Her­itage per­son­nel were on site con­duct­ing air qual­i­ty checks, which they said were read­ing with­in ac­cept­able lev­els, while sec­tions of the area re­mained cor­doned off as clean-up op­er­a­tions con­tin­ued.

On Fri­day, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um said it re­spond­ed to re­ports of oil in the vicin­i­ty of Rang­ie Nanan Dri­ve. It said clean-up op­er­a­tions were un­der­way as a pri­or­i­ty while in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ued, with con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed soil be­ing re­moved from the area. The com­pa­ny al­so said rep­re­sen­ta­tives were en­gag­ing res­i­dents.