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30114: Hermantin(News)At least 8 dead in shipwreck (fwd)
From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>
Posted on Fri, Mar. 02, 2007
At least 8 dead in shipwreck
BY FRANCES ROBLES
A passing ship and a pleasure boat found eight dead Haitians and two survivors
of a shipwreck near the Dominican Republic, and 44 more people are missing and
presumed dead, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.
After two days of searching, ships and aircraft from several nations have
failed to find the remnants of a ship that carried Haitian migrants before it
burned and sank earlier this week.
Two badly burned and dehydrated Haitians were found Wednesday morning drifting
in the waters 23 miles north of the Dominican Republic, said Petty Officer
Barry Bena. The vessel that found them -- a Worldwind motor yacht piloted by
Americans -- took the survivors to Montecristi, a town in northwest Dominican
Republic.
Gersan Lisien, 27, and Mali Siluei, 23, are in stable condition at Padre
Fantini Hospital in Montecristi. They both have first-degree burns but may be
released today.
''They said the boat just came apart and then caught fire, and the others did
not know how to swim,'' Dr. María Belliard, who spoke to the survivors through
a translator, said by phone from Montecristi.
She said the accident occurred Sunday and the survivors were adrift for two
days before they were rescued. They had waved and screamed for other boats to
stop, but the vessels kept going, the survivors said.
''They told me that the other boats had to have heard them calling for help,
but they did not dare get close,'' she said.
They were eventually found by Americans they had seen pass by the night before.
The crew of the Liberian-flagged merchant ship Kemeri found eight bodies, Bena
said. The ship assisted in the rescue for an entire day before it left the
area.
The survivors said they left Cap-Haitien, on the northern coast of Haiti, on
Sunday on a motorized home made vessel en route to the Turks and Caicos
Islands, the Coast Guard said.
Dominican newspaper Hoy said the migrants left from Fort Liberté, just east of
Cap-Haitien.
Their boat sank when gas tanks aboard exploded, Ramón Aristides Madera Arias,
Environment and Natural Resources prosecutor, told the newspaper. Madera said
the Environment Ministry and fishermen from Panama were also involved in the
rescue.
The Dominican navy said it sent a plane to fly search missions over the area,
while the Coast Guard has its Cutter Valient and three aircraft normally
deployed to the Bahamas searching a 625-square-mile area.
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