Commission of Inquiry into Guyana’s fatal boating incident begins public hearings

The Com­mis­sion of In­quiry (COI) in­to the Ju­ly 18 boat­ing in­ci­dent that left more than 100 peo­ple dead, heard on Wednes­day that the emer­gency bea­con on the fer­ry, the MV Bari­ma was not reg­is­tered.

Di­rec­tor of the of the Air Nav­i­ga­tion Ser­vices De­part­ment at the Guyana Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (GCAA), Rick­ford Sama­roo, said al­so that he be­came aware of the in­ci­dent on­ly at around 11.00 am (lo­cal time) on Ju­ly 19, more than two hours af­ter the first alert.

“From our side, it wasn’t reg­is­tered,” he said when asked by Trinidad and To­ba­go mar­itime law ex­pert, Nyree Al­fon­so.

GC­CA’s Aero­nau­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion ser­vice of­fi­cer, Tia Valen­zuela, said she was on du­ty at the Ched­di Ja­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s Con­trol Tow­er when she heard a con­stant beep­ing at 10:43 pm (lo­cal time) on Ju­ly 19. She said she then print­ed a re­lat­ed mes­sage.

Valen­zuela said due to the ab­sence of reg­is­tra­tion in­for­ma­tion, she could not con­tact any­one such as the own­er in re­la­tion to the bea­con.

The ves­sel was on its way from George­town to Port Kai­tu­ma, a small vil­lage with­in the Bari­ma-Wai­ni ad­min­is­tra­tive re­gion of the coun­try when the in­ci­dent oc­curred. It was car­ry­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 179 pas­sen­gers and crew when it sank. Au­thor­i­ties re­cov­ered 72 bod­ies, res­cued 76 peo­ple and said 30 oth­ers re­main un­ac­count­ed for. They are al­so dis­put­ing the dis­put­ing the num­ber of peo­ple who were on­board the ves­sel.

Re­tired act­ing Chan­cel­lor, Carl Singh, has since said that he would be rep­re­sent­ing the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Works, Bish­op Juan Edghill at the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry.

In the af­ter­math of the tragedy, the ves­sel’s cap­tain, chief mate and the Trans­port and Har­bours De­part­ment’s Goods Su­per­in­ten­dent were charged with mur­der.

The five-mem­ber COI, which is chaired by Jus­tice God­frey Phillip Smith of Be­lize, has been tasked with es­tab­lish­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the tragedy, in­clud­ing the caus­es and fac­tors re­lat­ed to the load­ing of the ves­sel, the board­ing of pas­sen­gers, con­di­tions on­board and the ves­sel’s cap­siz­ing and sink­ing.

It will al­so ex­am­ine the ad­e­qua­cy of search, res­cue and re­cov­ery op­er­a­tions, the ves­sel’s sea­wor­thi­ness and main­te­nance his­to­ry, and the com­pe­tence of its crew. In ad­di­tion, the in­quiry will fur­ther de­ter­mine whether ap­plic­a­ble laws and op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures were fol­lowed and whether neg­li­gence, mis­con­duct, dere­lic­tion of du­ty or oth­er fail­ures con­tributed to the dis­as­ter.

Sama­roo, who is among 100 wit­ness­es ex­pect­ed to give ev­i­dence be­fore the Com­mis­sion, whose ini­tial two-month time­line has been ex­tend­ed to six months, said that as a re­sult of the emer­gency bea­con not be­ing reg­is­tered, meant that its iden­ti­fi­ca­tion code could not be matched to reg­is­tra­tion records con­tain­ing de­tails about the ves­sel, its own­er and emer­gency con­tacts.

Sama­roo told the Com­mis­sion that dis­tress alerts be­gan ar­riv­ing at 10:43 pm (loc­cal time) on Ju­ly 18, but staff were not re­quired to no­ti­fy him im­me­di­ate­ly of sig­nals in­volv­ing a ves­sel. He said he be­came aware of the in­ci­dent on­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing a call from the GCAA’s Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al at about 1.00 am more than two hours af­ter the first alert.

He said that the Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al in­formed him that a ves­sel might be in dis­tress and that ap­proval had been giv­en for two air­craft to in­ves­ti­gate.

An emer­gency bea­con trans­mits a dis­tress sig­nal to help search and res­cue au­thor­i­ties lo­cate peo­ple in dan­ger. An Emer­gency Po­si­tion-In­di­cat­ing Ra­dio Bea­con, or EPIRB, is the type used in mar­itime emer­gen­cies. It trans­mits on the 406 MHz fre­quen­cy through the in­ter­na­tion­al Cospas-Sarsat satel­lite search and res­cue sys­tem. De­pend­ing on its de­sign, it can be ac­ti­vat­ed man­u­al­ly or au­to­mat­i­cal­ly.

An un­reg­is­tered bea­con can still trans­mit a dis­tress sig­nal and pro­vide lo­ca­tion in­for­ma­tion. But it does not pro­vide the ac­com­pa­ny­ing reg­is­tra­tion record that helps au­thor­i­ties iden­ti­fy the ves­sel and con­tact peo­ple fa­mil­iar with its move­ments.

Sama­roo told the Com­mis­sion that the bea­con aboard the MV Bari­ma was not reg­is­tered, not­ing that Guyana re­ceives dis­tress alerts through an arrange­ment with the Unit­ed States Mis­sion Con­trol Cen­tre, as part of the in­ter­na­tion­al satel­lite sys­tem.

The alert mes­sages con­tain in­for­ma­tion in­clud­ing the bea­con’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion code, the date and time, ge­o­graph­i­cal co­or­di­nates and an in­di­ca­tion of the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the lo­ca­tion.

Sama­roo said that af­ter re­ceiv­ing the Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al’s call, he con­tact­ed the con­trol tow­er to ad­vise that the two air­craft had been au­tho­rised to pro­ceed and that it was dur­ing that con­tact that he learnt of the dis­tress mes­sages re­ceived from the Unit­ed States.

Sama­roo in dis­tin­guish­ing the pro­ce­dures for avi­a­tion and mar­itime alerts, said staff were re­quired to in­form him im­me­di­ate­ly of an air­craft dis­tress sig­nal, but there was no equiv­a­lent re­quire­ment to no­ti­fy him im­me­di­ate­ly of one in­volv­ing a ves­sel.

Ac­cord­ing to the brief­ing he re­ceived from staff, the Mar­itime Ad­min­is­tra­tion De­part­ment, the GDF Coast Guard and the light­house were no­ti­fied with­in five min­utes of re­ceipt of the alert.

Mean­while, while the me­dia has been in­vit­ed to cov­er and record the dai­ly hear­ings, me­dia hous­es will not be al­lowed to car­ry the hear­ing live. The Sec­re­tary to the Com­mis­sion, Javed Shadick, did not of­fer a rea­son be­hind the de­ci­sion. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)