Yesterday our 7NEWS team was a part of that search. Between Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, we spent a combined 15 and a half hours on the sea - searching for a story, but also searching for survivors. Jules Vasquez reports.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
The first team to go from the city to go to the scene left from the Fort George pier at 5:00 p,mfor the three hour journey into night to Glover's Reef. On board were Coast Guard personnel led by Lt. Com. Johnny Borland, the Crimes Investigation Branch, the family's point person Audrey Matura-Shepherd, 2 close friends of the deceased and the 7NEWS team.
But 2 hours later, this is where we were. We had run aground on a shoal in the Tobacco Caye range. Actually three shoals in a row forcing personnel to go out in the ankle high water to push the boat off. With night upon us and unable to navigate this channel to get out into the blue, the mission had to be aborted; the body would remain in the water overnight, as we headed back to the city. It would be until close to 9:00 that we would see the lights of the city again.
By dawn the following morning, we were off again on a dive boat captained by Romy Badillo on a mission led by Radisson manager Jim Scott. The journey would
take us from the city to the Glover's Reef Atoll - a distance of over 60 miles. Under massive twin diesel engines, it took us 3 hours to get across an area so deep the sea turns a sullen midnight blue. All along, the crew kept a watch out for any clue at all.
Under a threatening sky, we entered through the southwestern elbow of the atoll, and Southwest Caye is the first we see. After that we encountered a long stretch of craggy exposed reef formations between Southwest and Long Caye. And it's on this that Richard Swift's body was found - in this area 6 miles north of Southwest Caye that he was snagged on the inside of the atoll - to give you perspective, our boat was on the outside. In fact, here's the Coast Guard taking Swift's body in to Dangriga.
They stopped briefly at this point about one mile south of where the body was found, to check an area on the reef for clues, but it turned out to be nothing. Our team continued north along the reef which stretches for about 15 miles. We scanned that stretch of reef with binoculars, and on foot, sending out a team in canoe to look more closely in the Long Caye area. And in this area near
Long Caye where Badillo demonstrated on his GPS there is the largest break, divers were sent down because the currents flow into the break - thus making it a high probability area for things to wash up.
But that team came back with nothing by then rain coming down, and the same for the crew in canoe. And he same for other boats that were out searching, and the same for the Astrium helicopter which flew over the entire periphery of the atoll. None of them found or saw anything. The distance between Swallow Caye where the boat was found and here is imposing. And the area of the sea between is so vast that it is more difficult than looking for a needle in a haystack.
As was noted in the family's press conference today, searches like that will continue.
