Dozens of lives were put in danger this morning when a San Pedro Belize Express water taxi crashed into the reef outside San Pedro Town. The boat is named Caye'z Stars and it ran aground on of the reef area known as Coral Gardens - which is a popular snorkeling spot between Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye. It happened at 6:20 am - on the first run from San Pedro to Belize City.
Passengers called the Belize Port Authority hotline and the Coast Guard but the Coast Guard told us that the management of the San Pedro Belize Express declined assistance because they had it under control. They took two vessels to transfer the passengers - but those passengers said it took about half an hour to get that done - a tense 30 minutes as the boat's structural integrity had been compromised on the reef - which was also damaged.
So was it the weather or navigational problems? We did hear form passengers that the compass on the boat wasn't working right - but we could not confirm this because the company didn't want to comment.
7News was at the Belize City terminal when the replacement vessel came in at 8:00 am and Courtney Weatherburne spoke to 2 of the traumatized passengers this morning. Here's how they explained it.
Jordana Segura, Student - St. Catherine's Academy
"Well it was something that happened very sudden. We were just going by very smoothly and apparently the boat captain didn't really had a very good position where he was going and crashed into the corals. It stunned everybody, we got scared and I am still a little shaken up about it. It was a very scary thing to have witness. Every on the boat start panicking and started grabbing life jackets and I didn't know whether I was supposed to panic too or what I was supposed to do because I've never been in a situation like that. All I was thinking was to grab a life jacket and that I need to call my mom, I need to find out what's going on, is everything going to be okay and most importantly I was thinking about am I going to be late for school? Am I going to get in trouble for this? They just kept pushing us to the front and pushing us to the back and I didn't really like what was going on because I think they should have at least waited for the boat to come before they start working on the boat because everybody was pretty scared because they were pulling on the boat, pushing on the boat and people were on it and I didn't really agree with that."
Vladimir Villas, St. Andrews School
"The boat was rocking back and forth because we crash into the reef because of the weather. They didn't know where the rock was and they didn't have the navigational stuff. People were scared, but I wasn't so scared because I knew I could swim."
There were about 50 passengers on the boat. The Port Authority which is in charge of investigating such accidents had no comment today.
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