Survivor clings to hope for five missing boat passengers

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

A sur­vivor of Sun­day’s boat­ing col­li­sion off Ch­aguara­mas is cling­ing to hope that five pas­sen­gers thrown in­to the sea will be found alive, as search and res­cue teams en­tered their third day of op­er­a­tions.

Re­count­ing the mo­ments be­fore the col­li­sion, the sur­vivor de­scribed how the oth­er ves­sel crashed in­to the cen­tre of their boat, leav­ing it par­tial­ly sub­merged and sev­er­al pas­sen­gers strug­gling to reach safe­ty.

While ex­press­ing hope for the miss­ing pas­sen­gers, he is al­so call­ing for a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the col­li­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial po­lice re­port, Ti­tus Au­gus­tine, 25; Amiyr Ali, 18; Anil Ahey, 38; Loren­zo Oliv­er, 35; 17-year-old Kieyan­na Seechan and 40-year-old Mar­cus Seechan were aboard the Bel­ba­gai, a 29-foot boat, when it col­lid­ed with the Bam­ba­leo, a 28-foot plea­sure craft, near Can­nings Point, off Ch­aguara­mas.

One of the pas­sen­gers aboard the Bel­ba­gai, 40-year-old Seechan, re­port­ed­ly sus­tained se­ri­ous in­juries and re­mained ward­ed at hos­pi­tal in crit­i­cal con­di­tion up to yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of strict anonymi­ty yes­ter­day, one of the sur­vivors said that de­spite know­ing the sever­i­ty of the im­pact, he was hold­ing on to hope that the five miss­ing pas­sen­gers had some­how sur­vived and would be found.

“I wish they could find every­body alive. It might be im­pos­si­ble for it to hap­pen, but I wish it can hap­pen. We’re all loved ones, we are all close to each oth­er and we all grew up to­geth­er.”

The sur­vivor, who said he was struck across his left leg but was oth­er­wise in good health, re­called the mo­ments lead­ing up to the col­li­sion in Staubles Bay, Ch­aguara­mas, on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

“It was about 6 o’clock at the lat­est. The cap­tain was steer­ing the boat and we saw a boat com­ing to­wards us; he pulled away to the left-hand side, more to the deep side.

“We were now go­ing to the event; we didn’t drink, we didn’t do any­thing. There was a guy on board mak­ing jokes. While the cap­tain kept steer­ing to the left, we just saw the boat com­ing straight to us in­to the dead cen­tre of us, run­ning us over.”

The col­li­sion left the Bel­ba­gai par­tial­ly sub­merged. The sur­vivor said he did not lose con­scious­ness and was among those who man­aged to pull them­selves to safe­ty.

He said they were as­sist­ed by pas­sen­gers aboard the Bam­ba­leo and oth­er near­by boaters be­fore be­ing tak­en to the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay head­quar­ters.

The sur­vivor said he al­so want­ed a full and com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the col­li­sion and the cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to it.

“Peo­ple are try­ing to blame us and said that we are in the wrong, but we need to get to the bot­tom of this.”

In a video post­ed on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day, the T&T Coast Guard out­lined ar­eas be­ing cov­ered by its teams and part­ner agen­cies.

Com­man­der in charge of Op­er­a­tions Ray Fred­er­ick said the Coast Guard had be­gun un­der­wa­ter search­es while main­tain­ing sur­face op­er­a­tions.

“At this time, sur­face search op­er­a­tions re­main on­go­ing in ac­cor­dance with the Coast Guard’s search and res­cue plan; an ad­di­tion­al ex­pand­ed search is al­so be­ing con­duct­ed on the north coast with a ves­sel as­signed to that area.”

Guardian Me­dia, along with vol­un­teers from the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team (HSRT), trav­elled to the site of the ac­ci­dent in Staubles Bay and oth­er lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing Monos Is­land and Scot­land Bay, scan­ning the sur­face of the wa­ter for signs of de­bris or sur­vivors. They al­so mon­i­tored ocean cur­rents across ar­eas in­clud­ing Point Gourde and Scot­land Bay.

HSRT vol­un­teer Ram­nath Ram­char­i­tar said the team was work­ing close­ly with au­thor­i­ties to find any trace of the miss­ing pas­sen­gers, while mon­i­tor­ing shores, beach­es and rocky coast­lines where peo­ple could po­ten­tial­ly be car­ried by strong cur­rents.

He said, how­ev­er, that stronger winds and chop­pi­er waves yes­ter­day had made con­di­tions sig­nif­i­cant­ly more dif­fi­cult, af­fect­ing the team’s abil­i­ty to search cer­tain ar­eas as thor­ough­ly as an­tic­i­pat­ed.

Fish­er­folk in the area al­so said they were re­main­ing vig­i­lant for any de­bris or signs of the miss­ing pas­sen­gers, ex­press­ing con­cern over the in­ci­dent.

Care­nage fish­er­man Bar­ry McLau­rence told Guardian Me­dia that he was from the same neigh­bour­hood as the pas­sen­gers and said the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty was un­set­tled as res­i­dents hoped for the best.

“All the peo­ple come from Care­nage; these are young peo­ple, so it’s a very trag­ic thing for all of us right now.”

McLau­rence said while he was op­ti­mistic that the miss­ing peo­ple could be found alive, he ad­mit­ted that the like­li­hood of them sur­viv­ing at sea with pos­si­bly life-threat­en­ing in­juries was slim.

“Even­tu­al­ly the sea will give them back. They’re go­ing to find them, but not right now.

“It have no man hid­ing in no bush; yes, we are keep­ing hope alive, we want to hope for some­thing good, but let’s be re­al... the boat split in half, peo­ple were in the wa­ter, they (the au­thor­i­ties) haven’t found any­body yet... let us all be re­al.”

He al­so urged boaters to show greater care and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty while on the wa­ter, as he re­mind­ed them about the im­por­tance of hav­ing their ves­sels equipped with lights when trav­el­ling af­ter dark and hav­ing their pas­sen­gers wear in­flat­able life jack­ets.