This morning three cruise ships were in port and the city was buzzing with the throb of traffic on shabby streets, the sweat of street hustlers on the make and the commercial combustion of Fort Street. Add to that a major mishap with the massive sliding gate at the Tourism Village, and you've got major drama. We captured it this morning.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
The falling gate injured cruise visitor Patricia Pate's leg. Made of solid metal and eight feet high and twenty thirty feet wide, it's a massive, weighty structure - which fortunately did not fall directly on her, but hit her hip as it was falling. It happened when the gate jumped from its tracks just as pate was trying to go in. While she waited for an ambulance, injured and immobile, village management and a paramedic who is himself a cruise visitor offered support. With congested traffic conditions created by all the cruise activity, it was a while before the ambulance arrived, and it would be some time before she was taken away via ambulance to the Universal Hospital. James Nisbet is the general manager of the Tourism Village
Jules Vasquez,
James are you concerned about the long term repercussions of this?
James Nisbet,
"Definitely. This is something that we need to very seriously and we are going to be looking into it along with lots of other things we need to improve on."
Jules Vasquez,
Will you be able to explain this to your partners in tourism, explain to them that your fence fell, it sounds unacceptable on a first world level?
James Nisbet,
"It does, it does. Accidents do happen. Everywhere in the world accidents happen. This is something that, it is very uncommon that a fence falls."
Jules Vasquez,
But it happened here before.
James Nisbet,
"Yes it has happened and it was for another reason that the fence fell."
But for whatever reason it did fall - and now those on the outside say that experiences like this will make everyone's fortunes fall.
Tour Guide,
"I think they bring the people here to enjoy themselves in our country but instead of enjoying themselves, they go back hurt and they go back and tell the other people not to come to Belize because you'll go to a tourist village with a high fence that drops on people and hurt people and I think that can affect an industry."
Jules Vasquez,
In a sense are you all prisons of your own design in so far as you all had to build these oppressive gates to keep out the locals...
James Nisbet,
"It is not to keep out the locals, not at all. The fences are a requirement by the same U.S. Homeland Security that we all have to travel through when we go to the airports. We need to create a perimeter 8 feet high, actually those are supposed to be a cement fences, so they are not concerned with that. Either we have the gates up and the fences in place or it is not secure in their eyes and therefore it is decertified - that is their point."
But what will be the point that the cruise ships make to the Fort Street Tourism Village?
Jules Vasquez,
Will we lose visitors because of this?
James Nisbet,
"I honestly don't believe so. This is an accident, we dealt with it immediately, I am sure that the passenger will understand it was an accident."
And if they don't fix it - it's an accident that can recur because the gate is just too wide, too heavy and too unwieldy for the narrow tracks that carry it.
Patricia Pate received a hairline fracture to her hip and must remain immobile for the next 24 to 48 hours. She is from Kansas and was on a Princess Cruise Ship. Now, the Fort Street Tourism Village has taken charge of her healthcare and other inconveniences as she'll have to fly back to Kansas.
