Search teams waited anxiously for daylight Wednesday to resume the hunt for nearly 70 Haitians missing after a handmade wooden sailboat splintered on a reef and spilled nearly 200 poor migrants into rough seas.
More than 100 survivors who clung to wreckage or razor-sharp reefs for hours in the waters off the Turks and Caicos Islands were plucked out by rescue boats Monday night and Tuesday — five managed to swim 2 miles (3 kilometers) to shore. Searchers also recovered 15 bodies.
Authorities cautioned that the outlook for more survivors wasn’t bright given the long hours that had passed since the accident. Anyone still in the water would be struggling with 23 mph (37 kph) winds and 6-foot (2-meter) seas, officials said.
“We hope that there are survivors and we can get them medical attention,” U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Johnson said. “However, as time goes by, it becomes less and less likely because of exposure and fatigue.”
She said Coast Guard ships, airplanes and a helicopter joined local authorities and volunteers in searching a 1,600-square-mile area Tuesday.
Turks and Caicos officials were moving quickly to send the ill-fated migrants back to impoverished Haiti, saying 60 were flown home Tuesday. Fifty-eight more spent Tuesday night under blankets on cots in a gym, and an unspecified number were at another detention site or in the hospital. The bodies of the unlucky 15 lay in a makeshift morgue.
It still wasn’t clear when the boat wrecked. Johnson said the accident occurred Monday afternoon, but Deputy Police Commissioner Hubert Hughes said it could have happened Sunday night. Turks and Caicos reported the disaster Monday to the Coast Guard, which patrols the area for drug traffickers and illegal migrants and helps in search and rescue efforts.
The sailboat, crowded with about 200 men, women and teenagers fleeing Haiti’s deep poverty, broke up as it tried to maneuver through treacherous coral reefs and was struck by heavy swells near West Caicos. It’s part of an archipelago that has proved deadly for Haitians trying to escape their homeland’s misery to find a better life elsewhere.
“The waves broke the boat apart,” Samuel Been, minister of public safety for the Turks and Caicos Islands, said after talking with 10 survivors. “It was frightening.”
Such perilous journeys have long been common throughout the world, although the number of migrants risking their lives has declined amid increased border enforcement by the U.S. and Europe, and the global recession that has eliminated many jobs for unskilled workers.
Still, Haitians in particular continue to brave the risks. Nearly 100 Haitians, including some eaten by sharks, died in May 2007 when an overcrowded sloop capsized off the Turks and Caicos. Some of the 78 survivors charged that a Turks and Caicos patrol boat rammed their vessel as they approached shore and towed them into deeper water.
Turks and Caicos, which lies between Haiti and the Bahamas, is a magnet for divers who come to explore its clear, shallow waters and reefs — conditions that also make it treacherous for boaters unfamiliar with the jagged outcroppings of coral that lie menacingly just below the surface in some places.
Survivor Alces Julien told The Associated Press it was one of the reefs that claimed the sailboat. He said the Haitians had been at sea for three days when they spotted a police vessel and in trying to get away accidentally steered the boat onto an outcropping.
“We saw police boats and we tried to hide until they passed,” he said at a hospital where survivors were treated for dehydration. “We hit a reef and the boat broke up.”
Hughes, the police official, said officers were not pursuing the migrant vessel, which did not have a motor. “They were traveling in waters that are quite dangerous if you don’t know the area quite well,” he said.
Rescuers found survivors stranded on two reefs roughly 2 miles (3 kilometers) from West Caicos Island, Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Matt Moorlag said. Most were ferried to land by Turks and Caicos authorities in small boats.
Five survivors were found on West Caicos after apparently swimming ashore, Hughes said.
Survivors told authorities the boat set out from northern Haiti last week with about 160 passengers, then stopped at an unknown location and picked up 40 others, Johnson said. She said too many people on the boat appeared to be a factor.
“These vessels, they are grossly overloaded,” she said of the rickety vessels that Haitians typically use in their desperate voyages. “Two hundred people on a sailboat is astronomical.”
Fifty-eight of the survivors were surrounded by private security guards at a two-story, concrete gymnasium near West Caico’s small airport.
“The people are being taken care of,” said Donald Metelus, an official from the Haitian Embassy who visited them. “They can walk. They are in good health.”
Haitian migrants caught in the region are normally returned to Cap-Haitien in northeastern Haiti. A Haitian official there said he was busy processing 124 other migrants returned by U.S. authorities Monday and did not know when the survivors from Turks and Caicos might arrive. Been said 50 of the survivors were flown home Tuesday.
People-smuggling is a well-established, word-of-mouth industry in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere‘s poorest nation. Brokers ply poor neighborhoods and marketplaces, offering spots for about $500.
Haitians often pool their money to send a family member hardy enough to survive the perilous journey, often in crowded, filthy conditions without food or much water.
The migrants routinely are hoping to reach the United States, though many stay in the Bahamas or Turks and Caicos after finding work.
Despite the slowdown in migration that has been seen in many places with the onset of global economic crisis, Haitians don’t seem to be deterred. According to the U.S. Coast Guard in Miami, 1,491 Haitians were intercepted at sea in the nine months through June 2 — not much below the 1,582 stopped during the previous 12 months.
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[Updated July 28, 2009, 8:20 a.m.]
A boat carrying Haitian migrants capsized and sank off the Turks and Caicos Islands and up to 85 people are missing, the U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday. One survivor said the boat struck a reef as it tried to elude police.
Rescuers found 113 survivors stranded on two reefs and recovered two bodies, said Lt. Cmdr. Matt Moorlag, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami, revising an earlier statement that four bodies had been found.
“Our main goal right now is just to get everybody out of the water and get medical attention for those who need it,” said Petty Officer Third Class Sabrina Elgammal, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
The shipwreck happened around 2 p.m. Monday. By late evening, Turks and Caicos authorities using small boats had rescued about 40 people stranded on a reef 2 miles (3 kilometers) southeast of West Caicos island. Many others were later found on a nearby reef, Moorlag said.
The boat carrying up to 200 Haitians had been at sea for three days when passengers saw a police vessel and accidentally steered the boat onto a reef as they tried to hide, survivor Alces Julien told The Associated Press at a hospital were some survivors were receiving treatment.
Elgammal said information from survivors indicates that between 160 and 200 people were on board when the vessel capsized near this island chain north of Haiti and southeast of the Bahamas. She said the cause of the accident is under investigation.
A Coast Guard cutter has been searching through the night for survivors, and Moorlag said a helicopter and a jet will join the search at first light. He said a C-130 aircraft was expected Tuesday morning to help in the search.
Haitians routinely take to the seas in rickety, overcrowded boats in hopes of escaping poverty in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.
In May 2007, an overcrowded sloop carrying more than 160 migrants capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands. Some of the victims were eaten by sharks. The 78 people who survived accused a Turks and Caicos patrol boat of ramming their vessel as they approached shore and towing them into deeper water.
