HOURS before the GDFS Shahoud set sail from Georgetown, the Coast Guard had already launched a full-scale emergency response to the distress signals from the MV Barima.
The story that is emerging from the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Barima disaster over the last few days is one of soldiers saving lives in the darkness of July 18-19. More than 50 lives.
If you’ve been hearing a different story, chances are, you’ve been hoodwinked. The approximately 500 men and women of the Coast Guard didn’t fail our nation in the hours and days following the sinking of the Barima; they served it with courage and determination.
The headlines from newspapers that thrive on a journalism of distortion and outright lies would have us believe that the Coast Guard were asleep at the wheel. That perhaps they sat back and waited for the Shahoud to kick into gear four hours after the distress signal was received at the control tower of the CJIA — false.
The testimony these last few days from no less than 10 members of the Coast Guard and the Air Corps paints a very different picture. The Shahoud, an independent and sophisticated warship, is one of the most important assets of the Coast Guard. To man this floating ecosystem capable of travelling 2,000 miles, reaching a maximum speed of 35 mph and remaining at sea for up to 10 days, takes a crew of no fewer than 24, each member highly specialised and technically trained.
The cruel headlines from media outlets in distress screamed otherwise. Ignore them. Which commander in his right mind would launch a vessel like the Shahoud without the full roster of his crew on board?
With the Shahoud and its team on red alert, the Coast Guard used available coordinates to launch a Metal Shark crew from its Pomeroon floating base. Minutes after the distress alert was first received, a crew was speeding out into the Atlantic.
If you report a fire, you can give the emergency team a street, a village or a nearby landmark. Smoke may help guide them to the scene.
That is not how it works at sea.
There are no street corners or house numbers. Coordinates give rescuers a position to work towards. Reaching that position in darkness, then finding people in the water, is another challenge altogether.
Could they simply push the Metal Shark to its maximum speed without endangering the soldiers on board? A boat’s top speed on paper tells us little about how fast it can safely travel through rough water in poor visibility.
Their priority was to get there safely enough to help.
Meanwhile, Captain Jerry Gouveia Jr and his Roraima Airways crew were preparing to take off from Ogle. Their task was to help locate and mark the source of the distress signal.
With a bit of luck and a series of bright flares, the spot where the Barima went down revealed itself, and every asset of the Coast Guard converged. By 02:00hrs – three hours after the distress signal was transmitted and an hour before the Shahoud left Georgetown.
Meanwhile, the Metal Shark, with Petty Officer Keon Smith in command, was adjusting course as new coordinates came in. Getting to the target area from the mouth of the Pomeroon River takes approximately two and a half hours by day. During an unusually dark night with waves higher than normal against a strong tide, Smith and his crew had about 45 kilometres to cover.
The crew made it in good time. Smith and his team couldn’t see Gouveia’s Roraima aircraft, but they heard the roar of its twin engines. First, they saw the debris from the Barima, and then they heard the cries for help. Pause for a moment and imagine what that must have sounded like.
They began pulling men, women and children out of the murky Atlantic waters, coughing, wheezing, vomiting, exhausted, and delirious. Captain Gouveia got the news of the first 10 on his transmitter before landing at the international airport at Ogle. If his father didn’t already know, he couldn’t wait to tell him.
The commander-in-chief, out of the country that night, was glued to his phone, following every move, every decision in real time. He would later describe the sinking of the Barima as “a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.”
By 03:00hrs, 50 survivors were rescued. That’s 50 out of a total of 76 survivors.
Any account that begins and ends with the Shahoud’s departure time leaves those people out. It leaves out the soldiers who reached them. It leaves out the aircraft helping to guide the search.
That is not a small omission. It distorts the story.
By 03:00hrs, the rescued passengers of the Barima were on a Maritime Administration Department vessel, which reached Charity at 07:30hrs.
And yet the Shahoud’s departure time became the stick with which sections of the opposition media have used to beat the entire Coast Guard.
That’s a sinister kind of distortion.
I didn’t hear the word failure. I didn’t hear incompetence during the first three days of the CoI. Instead, I heard well-deserved applause.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
