Shipwrecked Haitians tell of ordeal as search ends

[July 30, 2009]  PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos (AP) -- The young man was weak and alone when searchers found him on an uninhabited island shortly before authorities ended the hunt for victims of the sinking of a rickety sailboat crowded with people fleeing Haiti's poverty.

Fifteen migrants were confirmed dead, 118 were rescued and about 70 others remained missing when the U.S. Coast Guard and local officials called a halt to search efforts late Wednesday afternoon after a 52-hour operation that covered more than 1,500 square miles (3,800 square kilometers) of ocean.

In the hours before the search came to an end, a Haitian man in his 20s was discovered on an uninhabited island of West Caicos and was flown to Providenciales for medical treatment, a police spokesman, Sgt. Calvin Chase, said.

No details were available on his ordeal, but other migrants began to give a fuller picture of the disaster.

There was no warning when the overcrowded sailboat plowed into a coral reef and began to break apart near the Turks and Caicos Islands. In the darkness, some 200 migrants were plunged into the water, grabbing desperately at anything that might keep them afloat.

Joanel Pierre, a skinny 18-year-old, lifted his gray T-shirt on Wednesday to display the scratches clawed into his body by drowning shipmates.

"The ones who knew how to swim, swam," he told The Associated Press, speaking quietly and averting his eyes.

"The ones who didn't, died."

The blue-and-white sailboat set out before dawn Saturday filled with people from miserably poor northern Haiti. Their families had saved up $500 apiece to send them to what Haitians call "the other side of the water."

Their destination was the Turks and Caicos Islands, a tourism-dependent British territory where there are jobs in construction and maintenance -- and, sometimes, a little hope for a better future. Pierre wanted to work as a mechanic.

The boat was jammed with people. Men filled the deck, exposed to the hot sun, while women and men alike filled the dark, nearly airless hold below, survivors told rescuers. Pierre said the hold was packed so tight that nobody could lie down.

During the two-day journey, the migrants ate twice, they said -- rice and beans both times. They also had water.

About 10 p.m. Sunday, Pierre clambered onto deck for some fresh air, and was rewarded with a welcome sight: the lights of Providenciales gleaming on the horizon.

But before he could savor the moment there was a powerful jolt and a skidding sensation, "like a car had blown its tire," Pierre said. The hull began to splinter as waves smashed the vessel against a reef, survivors said. People spilled into the water.

"People started yelling, `God help me!'" Pierre said.

Pierre spoke in Cap-Haitien, the northern Haitian city where he and dozens of other survivors were flown back from the Turks and Caicos. Other survivors were being held in a gym in Providenciales, while the worst-off were in the hospital.

Like most of those who made it, Pierre managed to swim through 6-foot swells to the jagged reef that sank the boat and clung to it for his life. The sun was scorching, and there was no food or water.

"We were hungry, thirsty, uncomfortable," he said. "We went through every misery at once."

Others clung too pieces of the boat -- all that remained of the homemade craft -- terrified that their bleeding wounds would attract the black tip and tiger sharks that come to the area to eat snappers, the fish that spawn in the summer.

Early Monday, a boat passed nearby. Survivors waved and screamed, but it didn't veer from its course, said rescuer Dja Castel, recounting what survivors told him. Many gave themselves up for dead.

By the time the first rescuers arrived, the survivors had been in the 15-foot-deep water for 17 hours, and nobody was strong enough to scream.

Castel, who was on a boat in the area, spotted a red piece of clothing waving in the wind -- someone's shirt. As he approached, he couldn't make out people amid the wreckage of the boat.

Eventually the rescuers spotted a man clinging to a piece of wood. Two others were trying to swim toward a reef where about 20 people held on to the coral.

The rescuers threw a rope to one of the swimmers and pulled him aboard.

The other swimmer was going under, and Castel dived in to help. The swimmer's arms flailed in the waves. "He was fighting the water," Castel said.

On the boat, Castel gave the man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Water poured from his nose and mouth and ran down the sides of his face. After 10 minutes, the crew pronounced the man dead and turned their attention back to the living.

Some on the reef were wearing only their underwear. "They looked like someone who had lost hope," Castel said.

In Cap-Haitien, relatives gathered at the airport Wednesday to meet returning survivors being flown home by Turks and Caicos immigration authorities.

Pierre, who was reunited with his mother, said that for all the horrors of the voyage he was still desperate to get out of Haiti, where 80 percent of the people survive on less than $2 a day.

"I'm not going on the water again," he said. "But if God made it possible for me to get a plane ticket, I would go."

[Associated Press; By JENNIFER KAY and JONATHAN M. KATZ]

Associated Press writers Jennifer Kay reported this story from Providenciales, Turks and Caicos, and Jonathan M. Katz from Cap-Haitien, Haiti.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.