Family, TTITOA call for stricter hiking safety after Jordan’s death

Sascha Wil­son

Forty-year-old Jes­si­ca Jor­dan loved hik­ing, but her un­cle be­lieves she may not have been aware of the dif­fi­cul­ty of the hike to Madamas Riv­er on Sat­ur­day, which end­ed in her death.

While he ac­cepts that the in­ci­dent was a trag­ic ac­ci­dent, Lennox, who did not want to give his full name, be­lieves it could have been avoid­ed.

“It was some­thing ridicu­lous. It should have nev­er hap­pened. They should have called off that hike, but ac­ci­dents do hap­pen, and things hap­pen,” he said.

Lennox be­lieves fu­ture in­ci­dents could be pre­vent­ed if cer­tain mea­sures are put in place, in­clud­ing re­quir­ing hik­ers to check in with po­lice be­fore em­bark­ing on a hike.

“By the grace of God, cer­tain things we can­not stop, but I feel in the fu­ture they should have some­thing in place where the po­lice should have peo­ple mak­ing a re­port that they are go­ing hik­ing, and if rain is falling, they should say: ‘Okay, that place is closed, you can­not go,’” he said.

Jor­dan was hik­ing with a group of about nine peo­ple near the Madamas Wa­ter­fall in Bras­so Seco, Paria, when she slipped while walk­ing through knee-high wa­ter.

Her legs re­port­ed­ly be­came trapped be­tween two logs and, de­spite re­peat­ed ef­forts to free her, she was sub­merged by ris­ing wa­ter caused by in­ten­si­fy­ing rain­fall.

Some of the oth­er hik­ers were forced to re­treat to safe­ty.

Res­cue teams, ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice of­fi­cers, fire­fight­ers, hik­ing guides, rel­a­tives and vol­un­teers from the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team, trekked for more than two hours to reach Jor­dan’s lo­ca­tion.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice said she was dis­cov­ered trapped in a wa­ter-filled hole in ex­treme­ly chal­leng­ing ter­rain. It took about eight hours through rugged con­di­tions to trans­port her body to an area ac­ces­si­ble by ve­hi­cles.

Lennox, who trekked to the area where his niece died and lat­er iden­ti­fied her body, said had the sit­u­a­tion in­volved some­one else, Jor­dan would have “stayed to the end.”

He ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the three hik­ers who re­mained with her and tried to save her, not­ing that one of them near­ly drowned in the process.

He said he was told that his niece was at peace in her fi­nal mo­ments.

“She reached a point where she knew she was go­ing to die and de­cid­ed to pray. That is when she was at ease,” he said.

Lennox said it was painful to think about what his niece would have gone through, but he be­lieves the hik­ers who tried to save her would al­so be trau­ma­tised, hav­ing had to watch help­less­ly as she drowned.

“It would have been dif­fi­cult for any­one to go back there in the night to re­cov­er her. What they did, to go back the oth­er day, was a smart thing to do,” he said.

Re­flect­ing on the ter­rain and the con­fined space where she be­came trapped, Lennox, who used to hike, said, “I saw the dif­fi­cul­ty for her to get out of there. They were try­ing hard to get her out.”

De­spite the tragedy, he said he was able to find clo­sure af­ter see­ing her body.

“She was look­ing like she was sleep­ing. She was look­ing beau­ti­ful, and her eyes were closed. I came to a clo­sure,” he said.

Lennox not­ed that his niece was pur­su­ing a de­gree in busi­ness man­age­ment and de­scribed her as a lov­ing, car­ing and help­ful per­son who had a deep love for an­i­mals.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTI­TOA) ex­tend­ed its con­do­lences to Jor­dan’s fam­i­ly, friends and loved ones.

It said, “As an as­so­ci­a­tion, the safe­ty and well-be­ing of all par­tic­i­pants in tourism ac­tiv­i­ties—both do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al—re­main our high­est pri­or­i­ty.”

It added that in­ci­dents such as this un­der­score the im­por­tance of vig­i­lance, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ad­her­ence to es­tab­lished safe­ty stan­dards across the tourism sec­tor.

“We strong­ly be­lieve that mem­bers of the gen­er­al pub­lic should ex­er­cise due dili­gence and con­duct prop­er re­search when se­lect­ing tour op­er­a­tors and trans­port ser­vice providers for recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties. Equal­ly, we ad­vo­cate that all op­er­a­tors pro­vid­ing tour ser­vices be prop­er­ly reg­u­lat­ed, cer­ti­fied, ad­e­quate­ly trained and ful­ly in­sured to en­sure the high­est lev­els of safe­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty for their clients.”

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so called for greater col­lab­o­ra­tion with the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

“TTI­TOA re­mains hope­ful that mean­ing­ful im­prove­ments and strength­ened safe­ty mea­sures will emerge from this trag­ic event, con­tribut­ing to safer tour ex­pe­ri­ences mov­ing for­ward,” it said.

Jor­dan’s fam­i­ly has not fi­nalised fu­ner­al arrange­ments as they are still await­ing the au­top­sy.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.