One dead, two survive after pirogue capsizes

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

A boat al­leged­ly trans­port­ing cop­per il­le­gal­ly to Venezuela over­turned in rough seas off south Trinidad late Fri­day night, leav­ing one Venezue­lan man dead while two oth­ers sur­vived.

The lat­est tragedy oc­curred days af­ter two Venezue­lan mi­grants—in­clud­ing a six-year-old girl—drowned, when an over­crowd­ed pirogue cap­sized in the Colum­bus Chan­nel.

It al­so comes amid re­ports that sea con­di­tions in the Gulf of Paria and Colum­bus Chan­nel have be­come in­creas­ing­ly haz­ardous fol­low­ing the re­cent earth­quake off Venezuela, with fish­er­men and res­i­dents point­ing to pos­si­ble changes in the seabed and coast­line.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors iden­ti­fied the de­ceased as Venezue­lan na­tion­al Julio Lopez.

The two sur­vivors, in­clud­ing Nikol Lan­dae­ta, were lat­er found alive af­ter mak­ing it safe­ly to shore.

On Sat­ur­day night, mem­bers of the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team, led by Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat, searched the shore­line from Ica­cos to Gal­fa Point af­ter re­ports that Lan­dae­ta was miss­ing.

Ramb­harat said both sur­vivors made it ashore af­ter the ves­sel en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties in rough seas.

The sur­vivors told res­i­dents in Ica­cos that the three were trav­el­ling to Venezuela aboard the pirogue when it cap­sized.

They said Lopez at­tempt­ed to stay afloat us­ing a gas cylin­der as a flota­tion de­vice but was un­able to make it to shore.

Hours lat­er, Lopez’s body washed ashore at Ica­cos.

Res­i­dents said the sur­vivors, fear­ful of be­ing ar­rest­ed be­cause of the il­le­gal voy­age, left the area in a black ve­hi­cle be­fore po­lice ar­rived.

Coast Guard per­son­nel and law en­force­ment of­fi­cers re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent on Sat­ur­day.

The lat­est in­ci­dent comes less than a week af­ter an­oth­er pirogue car­ry­ing six chil­dren and 24 adults over­turned in rough wa­ters off Los Iros Beach.

That tragedy claimed the lives of Venezue­lan mi­grant Ed­win Par­ra and six-year-old Brithanny Lin­neth Yanett León Pala­cios af­ter the ves­sel, be­lieved to have de­part­ed Erin Beach, cap­sized while at­tempt­ing the cross­ing to Venezuela. Res­cue teams lat­er con­firmed they were the on­ly fa­tal­i­ties be­fore end­ing the search.

The back-to-back mar­itime tragedies have re­newed con­cerns over the dan­gers of il­le­gal sea voy­ages across the Colum­bus Chan­nel, par­tic­u­lar­ly as mi­grants con­tin­ue trav­el­ling be­tween the two coun­tries de­spite de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the cross­ings told Guardian Me­dia that since the re­cent earth­quake off Venezuela, more mi­grants have been leav­ing Trinidad but are en­coun­ter­ing in­creas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous con­di­tions at sea.

They be­lieve ge­o­log­i­cal changes linked to the earth­quake, in­clud­ing re­port­ed seabed ex­tru­sions and coastal up­thrusts doc­u­ment­ed along parts of south-west Trinidad, may have al­tered cur­rents and un­der­wa­ter con­di­tions, mak­ing the cross­ing even more treach­er­ous.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cap­siz­ing are on­go­ing.