On Saturday morning, two fishermen were lost on rough southern seas - but tonight instead of tragedy, the story is about a remarkable search and rescue operation where everything went right. At 6 on that day the two fishermen left Dangriga en route to Turneffe but adverse weather conditions caused their craft to capsize. That left the fishermen in a 5 hour ordeal in the open waters off the coast of Dangriga. That's where the Commander of the BDF Lloyd Gillett himself played a major role in finding the men.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
At 6 on Saturday morning two fishermen braved a strong northwesterly breeze and rough seas as they left Dangriga heading to Glover's Reef. Eddy Usher says that 2 hours after they left there was no communication with the fishermen That's when he says he got involved in trying to find them. Things because worrying by 11:30 when still there was still no word from the men.
Eddy Usher,
"I would say about eleven thirty to twelve we initiated a search party notifying the BDF and the other authorities in the area that we have a situation, a possible situation of a boat could have went down or missing, engine problems floating. I then contacted or got contacted by Mr. Gillett from the BDF saying that he was in Dangriga at a training and he could send his plane up and go and look.
At that time Mr. Gillett then contacted me about after a half hour of flight and he said he spotted the boat coordinates, 16 by 88, which is just outside of South Water Caye. I then got in my boat with other personnel from my staff and we then started heading in the direction following the GPS, a handheld GPS we had onboard, and on our way out, I would say three miles after we got outside of South Water Caye, we then noticed a red flash in the water and we went close and we saw that it was one of our guys and we picked him up. They both had on two life jackets each and that kept pretty good buoyancy for them."
Brig. Gen. Lloyd Gillett, Rescuer
"Well I did this sort of work for the twelve years that I was at the Airwing so it is nothing new for me. I've done a lot of this before."
And Commander of the BDF Brigadier General Lloyd Gillett proved his worth as within half hour of taking flight he had located the capsized boat, mapped its coordinates and passed it on to BDF search and rescue teams on the ground. Not too long after that Usher found the fishermen who were trying to swim to safety. It's a great save that could have easily been a story of a disaster at sea. Today both Gillett and Usher had a few words of warning for those sea-fearers in these most tempting days to head to sea.
Brig. Gen. Lloyd Gillett,
"Its especially important since we are coming towards then Easter season that people remember to always let someone know where they are going and what time they expect to be there. I think this helped a lot during this case. It is also important for people on a boat to be wearing life jackets and I think this helped as well. It is also important that when you call the BDF, you can give them as much information as possible and a contact number so that we can verify with the persons before the search begins and we can check with other people.
It is also important that they wear life jackets, that parents supervise their children. It is also important that the people who are tasked with making sure that they raise the alarm, raise the alarm as quickly as possible because people tend to drift in the water and so the quicker we can get into the area, the more likely that we will locate them in the general area that they were supposed to be."
Eddy Usher,
"We want other people out there in the marine industry as well, tourism, to just be careful. If the sea is too rough just tell the guys not to go. These guys claimed that the load that they had on the boat shifted as they hit a wave, they had already made it from Dangriga out to Tobacco Caye, they were five miles out of Tobacco Caye so it wasn't something that the boat wasn't safe, the boat was safe but the load moved. Whether it could have been tourists onboard and the tourists moved and everybody went on one side of the boat and bam the boat rolled over. Fortunately we lost the material we had onboard but no lives were lost."
Gillett says he's advising boat owners to wherever possible obtain flare guns to signal rescue operations in case of emergencies out at sea.
