12392: Miami Herald: Haitian survivor recounts horror of boat explosion (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

 Posted on Thu, Jun. 20, 2002

Haitian survivor recounts horror of boat explosion
35 are missing; destination was the U.S. Virgin Islands

PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten - (AP) -- Haitian migrant Annocuis
Jean Christla had imagined the eight-hour boat trip through
the night would take him to better opportunities on U.S.
shores.

But about an hour after the rickety, crowded boat shoved
off from St. Maarten in the eastern Caribbean headed for
the U.S. Virgin Islands, it exploded and sank.

Christla said Wednesday that he and another man were the
only survivors among the 37 on board at the time of
Sunday's explosion.

''God helped me to survive,'' he said while at a police
station in the Dutch territory of St. Maarten.

Now awaiting deportation back to his impoverished homeland,
Christla said he will never again try to make such a
voyage. Police did not say when Christla would be taken
back to Haiti.

The boat had been smuggling Haitian, Dominican and Chinese
citizens from St. Maarten, which shares an island with the
French territory of St. Martin, to St. Thomas in the U.S.
Virgin Islands, coast guard officials said.

Christla and a Haitian friend each paid $500 upfront for
the trip, with another $300 due upon arrival.

''I knew it wasn't safe . . . but I had to take a chance,''
he said, explaining that he had come illegally to St.
Maarten a year ago, but still could not find work.

After a short time at sea, the captain tried to switch fuel
tanks, which then caught on fire and exploded about five
miles off Anguilla's coast, he said.

Some people were stunned or killed in the blast, while
Christla and others jumped overboard as the boat turned
into a fireball.

Christla said he managed to grab hold of a floating tank,
and watched others around him struggling to stay afloat.
One man grabbed wildly at the floating debris, pleading for
help before sinking beneath the water's surface, he said.

A small child was thrown overboard in the blast. ''I tried
to help, but I couldn't. I could barely help myself,'' he
said through an interpreter in Creole.

He said he looked around the chaos for his friend. ``I saw
his body floating past. There were bodies all over.''

Christla held tightly to the tank, thinking he also was
going to die, until a French police boat discovered him off
the coast of Anguilla on Sunday.

''I thought [God] had sent someone to come save me,'' he
said, smiling with relief at the fact that he had escaped
with just a cut across the bridge of his nose and scrapes
on his arms and chest.

The other Haitian man rescued off French St. Martin was in
a hospital in Marigot, but officials there would not give
details of his condition or identity.

Authorities said they had found no other survivors in the
water, and no bodies.

St. Maarten police said the boat's owner, who was not on
board, had fled the island.

The Caribbean islands have seen a sharp rise in drug
trafficking and migrant smuggling in recent years as
independent boat owners risk the choppy seas and police
patrols for high returns.

The crossing is often hazardous. In May, at least 14
Haitian migrants drowned and 73 were rescued when their
overcrowded 35-foot sloop sank off the Bahamas.

In March 2001, at least 15 migrants drowned when the
40-foot wooden boat Esperanza sank off French St. Martin.
French authorities arrested two crew members and a man
accused of collecting the migrants' money.



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