And, first responders to the scene encountered something that nothing could prepare them for - the extraction of 10 bodies from a mangled and burned. mountain of wreckage. Here's what it looked like on the ground:
This is the fiery scene fire department encountered at mile 68 at 10:00 on Saturday night.
Under the shrill wail of sirens - more than a dozen firemen from multiple stations responded.
Kenneth Mortis, Belize National Fire Service
"Between the Twin Towns of Santa Elena and San Ignacio they dispatched they both dispatched a fire truck and two ambulances we had an ambulance from the Spanish lookout community and the San Ignacio Community hospital there they also dispatched an ambulance. We had off duty personnels both from The Spanish lookout community in terms of fire fighters we had the entire Cayo crew fire fighters off duty that responded I would say easily we had an approximate 20-25 emergency responding personnel's on that scene trying to assist in whichever way they possibly can whether it was fire fighting and then of course once the blaze was extinguished that's when we went into body extrication mode then we load them up on whatever means of transport I believe it was the ambulance and they were taken to the nearest medical facility which would have then been the San Ignacio Community hospital."
First they had to bring the fire under control which they managed to do within minutes.
Desperate relatives arrived at the scene rushing to hopefully find someone alive. While the fire crews were trying to figure out how to get the survivors or the bodies out from this mountain of wreckage.
Kenneth Mortis, Belize National Fire Service
"It was something that I do not wish to encounter no time soon. A small car was fully engulfed in flames as you have already seen on social media and what have you. So all we could have done was extinguishing the fire without contributing too much to disperse or dispel what we later learnt were the bodies that were trapped in this particular vehicle once that was done we tried our best to conduct an investigation as to what really went down? What really happened what really contributed to this fiasco on that uneventful evening. Information still forth coming from both the fire department out west and the police department as we have still not directly ascertained what contributed to that to that accident Saturday night."
The red glow of the sirens continued for hours as fire teams tried to use the jaws of life to get bodies out of the heap of wreckage.
Mayor Earl Trapp was shaken by what he saw:
Earl Trapp, Mayor of Santa Elena San Ignacio
"But upon me reaching at this site honestly it was heart wrenching to see so many bodies burnt in one vehicle you know and I can tell you when the fire department along with the police were jacking the vehicle and took out four bodies honestly when I saw one baby that was like four years. I broke into tears it was sad and there was still like four more bodies in the vehicle and that when I called out back how operator to come and assist and to raise the vehicle and to clear the highway and I am really grateful for him for responding and he was here in like 20 mins and I thank my staff for responding whenever we call upon them but it was heart wrenching it is still heart wrenching."
For those first responders, removing body after body at a mass casualty event, the toll was enormous:
Kenneth Mortis, Belize National Fire Service
"We do have this program offered to our guys courtesy of the government of Belize and ministry of public service. Apart from that then we can only lean on ourselves internally some of the more senior guys that have basically put in years in this job they can be a sort of comfort and mentor a tutor so to speak to the younger guys to help them get over this barrier I don't know how long it will take some of them to recover. We've had officers in the past that have experienced this type of situation from a residential structure and like I said we take measures if the need arises that they require more time off from home than that is expected then we will facilitate them with that."
