| San Pedro Belize Express Pier Collapses |
| Tue, April 22, 2014 |
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Thousands of Belizeans rushed to the cayes over the Easter weekend and most of them went on water taxi's. But, coming back nearly proved disastrous in Caye Caulker on Sunday evening at around 5:00, when hundreds of passengers queued up on the San Pedro Belize Express Pier to get on the boat back to the city. But the rickety wooden pier couldn't take the load and at about the half-way point, an entire of it collapsed - causing the waiting passengers to fall into the sea. Fortunately it was only a short distance down, and the water was shallow. No one was seriously hurt, passenger report receiving a few scratches and losing cellular phones.
San Pedro Belize express sent out a release today saying that their staffers, Port Authority and Coast Guard were present and asked passengers wait on the beach to ease the stress on the bridge. But the release says, quote, "this request was met with rebuttals as the crowds continued to move onto the bridge against the directives of the authorities resulting in a portion of the bridge buckling under the pressure." The release adds that the company is quote, "making every effort to fortify its ports and implement additional safety features to ensure this incident is not repeated."
The Commissioner of Ports Merlene Bailey Martinez says it is reviewing the accident, but has no sanctions planned at this time.
And while that is the treatment of the pier failure, there's no way to account for what happened after. As you can imagine, folks desperate to get off the island rushed over to the Caye Caulker Water Taxi pier. Not wanting to create another collapse police tried to enforce crowd control and that's when all kinds of pushing, shoving and fighting started to happen. There were fights between civilians and a fight involving police. That happened when police tried to restrain this man, Gregory Myers, who was identified to us as a former US Soldier. Island police got information that he was causing trouble on the pier - Gregory says he was trying to maintain order. Still, police tried to arrest him, which led to a struggle on the ground, where the officers ended up choking him as a means of restraint. Myers was charged with three counts of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.
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