With still no trace of the three fishermen attached to Noble House Seafoods, family members of the missing men are calling for answers from the lone survivor and the fishing crew that rescued him.
As of yesterday, the families remain clueless and said they will be meeting with the Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill for an update on their investigation. The families are scheduled to meet with Edghill and the team probing the disappearance of the men along with the lone survivor, Vincent Dazell and his rescuers today.
Edghill had told this newspaper that he will be presented with a report from the Board of Inquiry which was set up to investigate what occurred. Additionally, the search for the men is continuing.
It has been a month since the fishermen: Harold Anthony Damon, 45, Captain of the vessel; Ronald Burton, 78; and Winston Sam, 46, of McDoom, East Bank Demerara went missing.
And while the families are not giving up hope, they are of the opinion that the stories being told by Dazell and the men that rescued him are inconsistent.
“We don’t hear nothing from anyone. Noble House don’t contact me as the wife of the captain or no other family member and if we do find out for we self they say they don’t have no update… I remember I ask at one of the meeting if it would be impossible to find the boat, such a big vessel and they said no,” Damon’s wife Tonszadel Beckles-Damon said.
“We still believe they are alive because it is over a month and the bodies ain’t float up nowhere and they cannot locate the boat. We holding on that they are still alive because we cannot understand how nothing from this boat ain’t showing up,” the wife lamented.
Last month, Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar and Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn named the investigating team at a brief meeting held at the Ministry of Public Works Boardroom, Kingston.
The team consists of Maritime Administration (MARAD) Director of Maritime Safety, Captain John Flores; Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard, Lieutenant Rawle Williams; Ministry of Agriculture Chief Fisheries Officer, Denzel Roberts; Yurlander Hughes from the Transport and Harbours Department; Ronald Charles from the Ministry of Public Works; Senior Superintendent, Ewart Wray of the Guyana Police Force Marine Unit and Dwayne Vyphuis, Occupational Safety and Health Officer from the Ministry of Labour.
Edghill had expressed concern over the fact that the boat captain was operating without being properly licensed. On this note, the minister stated that this should not have been the case and this now raises many questions on the practices at sea and more so at Noble House Seafoods.
However, Damon’s wife said that she was not aware of such and the Maritime Administration and Noble House Seafoods will have to provide answers. However, she said attention should not be shifted to whether her husband was licensed or not but rather remain on the fact that the men are missing.
Dazell last week told Stabroek News that when he was rescued he was clinging to the life raft from the vessel.
“I don’t know what happened to them I honestly don’t. When the boat was going down [Ronald] Burton and [Winston] Sam were on one side of the boat and I was on the other side… Nobody was standing close to me…Anthony had run back inside the boat to get his phone but I never see him back because the boat deh start sinking from the back and then it toppled,” he related.
“I momentarily went down and when I come up back I see the baskets and fishing tub floating around me. I was still holding on to the life raft but when I look I didn’t see nobody around me nor I didn’t see the boat… I float for like 45 minutes before they come and rescue me,” he recounted.
According to Dazell, when he was rescued by the fishermen on a small boat they had to lift him out of the water because “I had no strength to pull myself up. I deh catching cramps.” The survivor explained that even when he was in the boat he lost consciousness for some time.
The fishermen who saved him, he said, spent about three hours circling the area in a bid to rescue the other fishermen before deciding to head to shore. The area in which the mishap occurred, Dazell noted, is about 58 to 60 ft deep and even in the low tide it would be impossible to have visibility on the vessel.
He said that he could not recall the exact spot where the boat and his fellow crewmen disappeared. Nonetheless, he provided the team with the coordinates of the area where they last had a signal.
Multiple searches were reportedly carried out in the vicinity of where it is suspected the boat sank but scans of the seafloor were unable to detect the missing vessel.
