Guyana boat tragedy: Two confirmed dead as search and rescue operations continue

The Guyana gov­ern­ment Sun­day night con­firmed that the bod­ies of two peo­ple had been found and the search and res­cue op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue for at least 70 oth­er peo­ple still miss­ing and feared dead af­ter the fer­ry MV Bari­ma cap­sized on Sat­ur­day night as it made its way from George­town to Port Kai­tu­ma, a small vil­lage with­in the Bari­ma-Wai­ni ad­min­is­tra­tive re­gion of the coun­try.

“To the fam­i­lies that are out there who are won­der­ing about their loved ones, we are do­ing every­thing that is hu­man­ly pos­si­ble to find them,” Pub­lic Works Min­is­ter Juan Edghill told a news con­fer­ence as the gov­ern­ment an­nounced that it had launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mishap.

“Since we have this com­pro­mised po­si­tion of the man­i­fest not be­ing a true re­flec­tion of the oc­cu­pants on board, we are kind­ly ask­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic, fam­i­ly mem­bers, who you are aware had rel­a­tives or per­sons who would have jour­neyed, please en­gage us so we’ll be able to have a good grasp of who we are look­ing for so we’ll be able to know how we are man­ag­ing the sit­u­a­tion,” Edghill told re­porters.

“We on­ly have, as of six o’clock, com­ing out of the Mar­itime Res­cue Co­or­di­na­tion Cen­tre, two per­sons con­firmed dead. One that was dis­cov­ered ear­ly in the day and as we were wrap­ping up, be­fore dark, we had 15 boats de­ployed to check the near bush, as they call it in com­mon lan­guage, the man­groves along the shore­line.”

He said the oth­er per­son found dead is a woman this evening. “So we on­ly have two per­sons con­firmed dead at this time. The search and res­cue op­er­a­tion con­tin­ues”.

Prime Min­is­ter Mark Phillips told the news con­fer­ence that Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali, who had trav­elled to Cana­da last Thurs­day is re­turn­ing home on Sun­day night and that the search and and res­cue ef­forts have re­mained con­tin­u­ous from that mo­ment the dis­tress alert was re­ceived at around 11.pm (lo­cal time) on Sat­ur­day night.

But he said “as res­cue ef­forts progress to­day, au­thor­i­ties dis­cov­ered that a num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als who were res­cued were not list­ed on the ves­sel’s of­fi­cial man­i­fest.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, two res­cued crew mem­bers test­ed pos­i­tive for cannabis dur­ing med­ical ex­am­i­na­tions con­duct­ed by the health care per­son­nel,” he said, adding “and you would agree with me that these are deeply con­cern­ing and shock­ing de­vel­op­ments.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, the gov­ern­ment has or­dered an ur­gent and com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volv­ing mem­bers of the Guyana Po­lice Force, the Guyana De­fence Force, the Mar­itime Ad­min­is­tra­tion De­part­ment, and oth­er tech­ni­cal mar­itime ex­perts will com­prise this team,” he said, adding that the “in­ves­ti­ga­tion will ex­am­ine all of the facts and cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing this tragedy, in­clud­ing the ac­cu­ra­cy of the pas­sen­ger man­i­fest, the load­ing of pas­sen­gers and car­go, the com­pli­ance with mar­itime safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, and the con­duct of the cap­tain and crew be­fore and dur­ing the voy­age.

“Let me be ab­solute­ly clear. Where neg­li­gence, mis­con­duct, or crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing is es­tab­lished, those re­spon­si­ble will face the full force of the law. There will be no ex­emp­tions and no tol­er­ance for ac­tions that place in­no­cent lives at risk,” Phillips said.

He said that the au­thor­i­ties are al­so re­leas­ing the ves­sel’s man­i­fest, to­geth­er with the names of those who have been res­cued and the names of those who have still been un­ac­count­ed for ”and still deemed as miss­ing, based on the in­for­ma­tion cur­rent­ly avail­able.

“These lists will con­tin­ue to be up­dat­ed as ver­i­fi­ca­tion ef­forts progress. On be­half of the gov­ern­ment of Guyana, I ex­tend our deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies who have suf­fered unimag­in­able dif­fi­cul­ties and loss, and I as­sure every af­fect­ed fam­i­ly that this gov­ern­ment, our gov­ern­ment, will con­tin­ue to stand with you through­out this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.

“Search and res­cue op­er­a­tions re­main on­go­ing. Every avail­able re­source con­tin­ues to be de­ployed, and we will spare no ef­fort un­til every pos­si­ble av­enue has been ex­haust­ed,” Prime Min­is­ter Phillips added.

Hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials said that of the 67 per­sons res­cued so far, 50 had been sent to the Char­i­ty Hos­pi­tal, where they were triaged, and dur­ing that process, “we were able to iden­ti­fy at least four per­sons who need fur­ther care”.

They said in ad­di­tion to the 50 per­sons, 17 oth­ers were brought to the Li­ma Hos­pi­tal by some of the small boats that were on the res­cue op­er­a­tion and that there had been “a full com­ple­ment of pro­fes­sion­al staff that was avail­able through­out the day and we’ll con­tin­ue once that is nec­es­sary to­mor­row and the day af­ter and so forth”.

One of those res­cued told re­porters that he was in a ham­mock rest­ing when he heard a loud noise and saw wa­ter rush­ing in as the fer­ry tilt­ed and start­ed to sink. He said it was chaot­ic as he and oth­ers held on to any­thing that was float­ing to sur­vive.

An­oth­er sur­vivor, De­von Gaskin, in an in­ter­view with on­line pub­li­ca­tion, News Room, re­called be­ing forced to plunge out of the sink­ing boat as the rough wa­ters rushed in. He said he was forced to hold on to a float­ing large gas bot­tle to sur­vive. The man said while the tragedy took place be­fore mid­night on Sat­ur­day, the first sight of a res­cue team was just af­ter 5 o’ clock on Sun­day morn­ing. He said he was fear­ful of los­ing his life.

Eve Jerome, who was trav­el­ling to Mabaru­ma in Re­gion One aboard the MV Bari­ma, said while she has sur­vived, her two chil­dren, Al­liya Gon­salves, 12, and Jerome Ja­cobs, 3, re­main miss­ing.

The woman said that her hus­band is blind and that the fam­i­ly sur­vives on pub­lic as­sis­tance and that she was trav­el­ling with her chil­dren to Re­gion One when tragedy struck at around 9:00 p.m.

Ac­cord­ing to Jerome, both chil­dren were hold­ing on­to her hands as the ves­sel be­gan tak­ing in wa­ter, but the strong waves tore them away from her grasp.

“Peo­ple start­ed rais­ing alarms that wa­ter was en­ter­ing the boat, but the cap­tain kept telling us that every­thing was nor­mal,” she said, cry­ing ” my ba­bies are gone and left me. I feel they are dead. Divers are search­ing, and I keep pray­ing for my chil­dren. This is the hard­est thing I have ever faced”.

Edghill said that the Guyana Coast Guard con­tin­ues to be the prin­ci­pal part­ner in the search and res­cue op­er­a­tions and ”I’m ad­vised that there are of­fers from in­ter­na­tion­al re­gion­al part­ners to lend as­sis­tance dur­ing the course of tonight and to­mor­row morn­ing to con­tin­ue with scop­ing the area.

“As of six o’clock this af­ter­noon, pri­vate sec­tor part­ners were out there scan­ning the ar­eas be­cause we want to lo­cate the ves­sel. So all of the avail­able tech­nol­o­gy for scan­ning, look­ing for life, every­thing is be­ing de­ployed as well as divers de­ployed.

“So we want to make it very, very clear. As a gov­ern­ment, all day we had one thing on our minds, res­cu­ing peo­ple. And I said ear­li­er, we were treat­ing this as if I was out there, what I want­ed peo­ple to do for me, that is what I was do­ing for those fam­i­lies and we will con­tin­ue to do that be­cause life is im­por­tant.”

But he said he was dis­ap­point­ed and hurt that “de­spite an of­fi­cial man­i­fest was giv­en to us, per­sons who were res­cued were not man­i­fest­ed, that is a crim­i­nal ac­tion.

“I see that as crim­i­nal. Maybe oth­er peo­ple have more dec­o­ra­tive words to use, but as the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble and we are tak­ing ac­tion in that re­gard, be­cause life is im­por­tant and no­body for the want of a few ex­tra dol­lars can cheat a sys­tem or do what­ev­er mis­chief you want and it has com­pro­mised the en­tire search and res­cue op­er­a­tion be­cause we are look­ing for a 133 peo­ple.”

He said the man­i­fest had 116 pas­sen­gers and17 crew, adding “we don’t re­al­ly know the re­al num­ber right now” adding “and then worse yet… we have con­duct­ed ran­dom test­ing for al­co­hol as well as for drugs.

“This is rou­tine be­cause we have a ze­ro tol­er­ance for mem­bers of the crew drink­ing or smok­ing while at work and for us to have pos­i­tive tests from the cap­tain. I can un­der­stand a sailor, but not a cap­tain. This is se­ri­ous. Peo­ple’s lives are at risk and those mat­ters will be dealt with,” Edghill added.

Mean­while, the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) in a state­ment said it “is deeply sad­dened by the cap­siz­ing of the pas­sen­ger fer­ry, MV Bari­ma” and that it “con­tin­ues to close­ly fol­low the on­go­ing search and res­cue op­er­a­tion to ac­count for the pas­sen­gers and crew.

“We ex­tend our prayers and sup­port to the fam­i­lies anx­ious­ly await­ing news of their loved ones. CARI­COM pays trib­ute to the courage, ded­i­ca­tion and self­less ef­forts of the res­cue teams and all who are re­spond­ing in the af­ter­math of the in­ci­dent, led by rel­e­vant arms of the Gov­ern­ment of Guyana, and in­clud­ing pri­vate ves­sel op­er­a­tors, who mo­bi­lized overnight in chal­leng­ing con­di­tions to save lives.

“CARI­COM stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Gov­ern­ment and peo­ple of Guyana, in par­tic­u­lar, the fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties that are be­ing im­pact­ed by this un­fold­ing dis­as­ter. “

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments have come from the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Unit­ed States. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)