Tonight, the authorities continue to search for Kevin Carcamo, the missing chairman of Hattieville Village. The last time his family saw him was on Sunday, when he left very early to report to work, but at the end of the day, he wasn't with the rest of his crew.
He's part of a group of men who work for Discover-seis, an oil exploration company which does seismic testing to find where oil is located in commercial quantities. They were searching for oil a few kilometres away from Freetown Sibun, just past Hattieville, but he never returned from that expedition.
Today, we found police and other civilians out searching for him, and Rural Executive Officer told us this evening that the longer he's missing, the more worried they are about his health:
ASP Chris Noble - Rural Executive Officer
"Basically what we have is that the gentleman has been missing for some time now and it's now time where we are kind of worried about his state. Bringing in several agencies; there is a rescue team from Belmopan, they gave us some very good help, some very information today and the villagers - we have persons on t6he ground that have very good knowledge of the area. All of this has been done in collaboration with the company and their employees and they also have villagers that are employees. The department has sent in 18 personnel that are still on the ground and we have other uniformed personnel on the ground likewise along with the military the BDF, they've been supplying us with a steady amount of personnel to check the areas marking them and see if going over them something may have been missed. Mr. Carcamo is still out there and we are hoping for a very good end to this."
Daniel Ortiz
"Is there anything from any of the teams which has gone out which suggests or provide any evidence that that causes for worry other than just him being missing for this long?"
ASP Chris Noble - Rural Executive Officer
"At this stage it's basically him being missing. Being known to a lot of the persons that are here and all of the persons that are now volunteering their time Mr. Carcamo - its definitely time for us to worry because he is not known by these persons as that."
Yesterday, we attempted to get a comment from his employers at Discover-seis in Hattieville, but we were told that we had to contact the management in Valley of Peace, Cayo. Today, we went to the main Valley of Peace office, but person authorized to speak on the topic was not available at the time. We did manage to speak with him by phone this evening, and he outlined Sunday's work day. Here's how he explained the moment when they discovered that Carcamo was missing:
Marvin Manzanero, Assistant Project Manager, Discoverseis
"They were working on this line 24 south of Freetown Sibun, south across the river. They quit working about 3p.m. in the evening, so they had to walk out about 45 minutes - catch a boat across the river to come across. We try to stop work before the sun goes down. That day we had come out about 5:30 in the evening. When we went to the sub base in Hattieville the guy made a head count and realize that one person was missing, so they got together, made a search crew and went back to the line where they had just left in search of Mr. Carcamo. Before they went they took their flashlights because it was about 5:30 to 6:00 they had to get ready. Because of our policy procedures we can't leave nobody behind, this is team work and a group of about 20 people gathered together and drove all the way back to the Freetown Sibun, jump across the boat in search of this guy because we can't leave anybody behind."
"We went back there and stayed about 3 O' clock in the morning and up to today we have the army out there, we have the police assisting us, we have a crew of 75 people out there assisting us which is the company's crew. We actually basically stop production right now to go and see if we can locate this person."
Daniel Ortiz
"In a situation like this, there will always be those in the public who will wonder and criticize the company how is it that a company who have a strict set of guidelines ends up missing one of its employees and it is not discovered until such a late time?"
Marvin Manzanero, Assistant Project Manager, Discoverseis
"Walking on a line on a path is about 1.2 meters, they are walking one behind the other in a sequence, so it's a little bit hard to count on a line where you have 45 people. They are basically spread out about 5-10 meters apart. So when everybody walked out - people are rushing out to come out of the line - people want to go home. Whenever they get to a certain point that's when they do the head count."
Carcamo is known to be a very experienced hunter and is considered to be capable in the bush.
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