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Sascha Wil­son

Strong fumes from an oil spill in a riv­er forced the ear­ly dis­missal of the Ves­signy Sec­ondary School and the clo­sure of the beach fa­cil­i­ties yes­ter­day. A Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um am­bu­lance and a fire truck were seen parked out­side the school, but there were no con­firmed re­ports of stu­dents or res­i­dents be­ing tak­en for med­ical treat­ment. Her­itage has yet to re­veal the source of the leak, but per­son­nel have been de­ployed to be­gin con­tain­ing and clean­ing up the spill.

The en­er­gy com­pa­ny’s per­son­nel and trucks ac­cessed the riv­er from the beach fa­cil­i­ty com­pound. Mar­va Suite, the Min­istry of Tourism’s li­ai­son of­fi­cer at Ves­signy Beach, said she con­tact­ed Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um around 6 am af­ter be­ing alert­ed by vil­lagers and the fa­cil­i­ty’s se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel. She said Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um re­spond­ed quick­ly, and af­ter as­sess­ing the sit­u­a­tion, she was in­struct­ed to close the fa­cil­i­ty.