JPs call for full review of SAR ops
RCIPS helicopter
(CNS): The two justices of the peace, who were supposed to work with UK Coastguard Commander Andrew Jenkins on the search and rescue report into an incident in which five people lost their lives in March, have called for a full review of local search and rescue operations because of weaknesses identified in his work. The recommendations by Mary Lawrence and Kirkland Nixon, however, never made it to Jenkins final draft report. Apologizing for what he said was a miscommunication, the deputy governor read their recommendations to the Legislative Assembly Wednesday.
With concerns from local politicians that Jenkins, from the UK Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA), might not be as independent as they would like, Premier Alden McLaughlin and Opposition Leader McKeeva Bush nominated the two local JPs to work with him in the hope of averting what Bush had suggested would likely be a whitewash of the incident, in which Edsell Haylock, Gary Mullings and his three nephews, Nicholas Watler, Kamron (11) and his brother Kanyi Brown (9) were lost at sea.
In their recommendations Lawrence and Nixon said government needed to review the resources allocated to search and rescue.
“We find that this review and subsequent report has identified sufficient unusual circumstances, structural weaknesses and resource deficiencies in the handling of the incident under review to justify a full and immediate review of the air and maritime search and rescue capabilities of the Cayman Islands,” Franz Manderson read from their findings.
The JPs urged government to take steps to implement findings of that as quickly as possible to ensure a strong and viable service. There needed to be a risk assessment of the local marine sector to identify the vulnerabilities from diving to fishing, the said, and recommended that the 2006 Royal Navy report should be revisited and considered in conjunction with any review of search and rescue operations, as they encouraged government to take action.
“This report in which five lives were lost has impacted the entire Cayman Islands communities,” the JPS stated in their recommendations. “It should not be repeated.”
Apologizing to the family for having to raise the issue again, Manderson said that now the reports were public the government would move forward to implement the recommendations.
Speaking about the review, the opposition leader continued to suggest that there were faults in the operation and something was not right and claimed that was why the UK authorities would not agree to a quasi-legal review where witnesses were called in public. Bush said that for many years he has pointed out that the RCIPS had not acquired the right equipment for SARs, including the boats and helicopter.
He said he supported investing in the right equipment, given that Cayman is surrounded by water, and believed the public did have the stomach to invest the necessary public funds to replace what is essentially an interdiction chopper with a proper search and rescue machine, as well as the right boats.
“For me, this was the last straw,” Bush said, noting that many lives had been lost at sea in the past but nothing had been done to try and reduce the dangers.
See related stories:
Mac: JPs to file own report on rescue review
Rescue report reveals resource problems
Category: Local News
All boats heading out to sea should have to report their departure to the authorities in advance. I do not think that our emergency service personnel should be put at risk searching for drug runners. Boats at sea without notification should be seized and confiscated.
Ignorant MLAs wasting more of our money
Did the case where a very very large sum of money which “mysteriously and mistakenly” appeared in the bank account at a local bank of one of the boaters ever get resolved in the Courts? It would be good if the RCIPS are on to this and I believe they are. Many people with contacts with persons involved in the drug trade say that one of the ways to get rid of the money is to bribe with a large sum one of the junior tellers in a bank and get them to deposit say $300,000 in undramatic amounts (so as not to attract attention) in a druggie’s account. Once there, the druggie withdraws it hoping he can claim he thought he had the funds in the account. It’s a very unsophisticated scheme and probably the cops/banks were on to it but the guys, especially the main one, who lost their lives in this accident were anything but sophisticated.
I wish “Anonymous 09/06/2016 at 3:54 pm” had left his or her name because it could be very beneficial to engage them in further discussions to make the most sensible decisions as to how best to create and operate an effective, efficient Search and Rescue function within and around the Cayman Islands. That “Anonymous” person obviously has a keen interest in this topic, has given this whole subject some sensible thought, and they have obviously done some research into how the UK has developed Search and Rescue [SAR] capabilities in which very well trained and equipped VOLUNTEER organisations are integral to the core of that country’s very competent and efficient SAR operations. I would add that there is also much to learn from the way those functions are organised in other larger countries, such as:
> the Civil Air Patrol of the USA, and
> the way SAR is organised in Canada in which SAR is “a SHARED responsibility among federal, provincial/territorial and municipal organizations, as well as air, ground and maritime VOLUNTEER Search and Rescue organizations”.
As a Caymanian actively involved in private boating, various other watersports, and general aviation, with many family and friends also involved in one or both of those activities, I long for the day when collectively we get past the finger-pointing and finally get a grip on the helm and the throttle to move our country in the right direction as quickly as possible away from its present (longstanding) woeful lack of these facilities and competencies in finding and rescuing boaters, seamen, aviators, and passengers in distress.
I should mention too that I long for the day when we also have in place reliable infrastructure and protocols aimed at being proactively preventative, to minimise the risks that people and property will become lost at sea. Some of these needs are simple:
> marine channel markers that are actually in place and in the right place, working reliably, maintained properly and clearly visible from both approach sides (outbound and returning) during daytime and night-time, would be a great start!
Other potential developments that have been mentioned for consideration include:
> competency training and testing/accreditation in boat handling (and perhaps marine insurers offering discounts for accredited boaters would help incentivise this?);
> periodic and/or ad-hoc/random inspection of private vessels to ensure they have in place the proper safety features and equipment for the size/class of vessel;
> lifeguards especially at heavily used “hot-spot” swimming areas where there have been a number of drownings and other deaths in recent years;
> training and enforcement of proper protocols in the use of Marine VHF channels in accordance with their designations; filing and closing of float plans; communicating emergencies and coordinating emergency responses including both the civil authorities as well as civilian volunteer efforts;
> protocols and resources for designated emergency response authorities to have access to the information by which to rapidly evaluate mobile handset location/movement (with such access to be activated in response to officially filed reports of missing persons or vessels, but with the appropriate protocols protecting privacy rights);
> a top-notch fully functional VHF Marine radio system at “Port Security”, that includes bearing indication with recording of bearing fixes;
> integration, upgrade (if necessary) and utilisation of the existing COCENSA radar to provide CIAA at ORIA with Secondary Surveillance Radar [SSR] air traffic control coverage (of all three islands and the airspace around them), compatible with mode-C and mode-S transponders. It would be good to also consider the feasibility of providing SSR for CKIA.
The solution for this is not simply to leave it at pointing fingers at the RCIPS and expect that they will be able to cover all of what our nation needs for SAR functions. The solutions will need to combine elements of various civil authorities (i.e. relevant government agencies) plus private sector entities (such as volunteer organisations to assist with searching for and rescuing people and vessels in distress or missing at sea).
For a prosperous nation descended from skilled and highly respected seafarers, in view of the sophisticated modern equipment and the abundance of knowledge and information that is now so realistically accessible, surely we can do way better than we have been doing. It is, after all, literally a matter of life and death.
Even with all the SAR equipment in the world it is useless to us without a safe place to dock and maintain the vessels needed. Boats cannot remain at sea 24/7 all year long without being maintained. We need larger vessels (say 80 to 150 ft vessels) that can safely operate in bad weather and can remain at sea for upwards a week or longer at a time. If we were to acquire such a vessel, where would we keep it? We have a body of water known as The great North Sound but we cannot use it because there is no access to it through the reef. It is only suitable for small vessels. The three or four 6 or 7 feet deep channels through the reef is useless for a decent size SAR vessel. That is why the ‘small’ largest police boat in use was damaged on the night in question when they tried to leave the sound. The Department of Environment over the years has consistently opposed any kind of proposed improvements to any channels around the island, and successive governments have swallowed their nonsense, so maybe some of the blame of what happened could be placed at their feet. Deepening and opening up these channels will hurt nothing and no one except the boat yards that are constantly fixing propellers that are damaged by these inadequate channels. In fact I believe that had the Police boat made it through the channel that night they had a slim chance of finding the boat even though the police vessels are not designed for SAR as they are too low down on the water, they are designed more for drug interdiction. Bottom line we need to remove the two or three dead coral heads and dredge one or two of the existing channels to at least 25 to 30 feet deep to be able to use a large enough vessel that can stay at sea carrying enough fuel, food, etc., for at least a week or longer at a time.
To 11:13 from 3:54 mentioned above.
It is quite wrong to assume that a dedicated SAR lifeboat service needs an all weather boat longer than 17 metres. The Severn class all weather, self righting boat used in the UK is the largest in a fleet of nearly 350 various models. This particular boat serves in the Atlantic and in many other hostile areas, with a range of over 250 miles and a volunteer crew of 7. A boat of this size and capacity could easily be station on a dedicated lifeboat dock around GT harbour, and another at EE. The remaining island coverage could be made up of inshore rescue boats, which vary in size from two man inflatables to 4 man Atlantic RIB’s capable of punching out in moderately rough seas.
Whilst the subject of physical assets is concerning, it’s not just about equipment. Manpower is equally vital, especially if you crew a dedicated service with volunteers. Going to sea in the teeth of a violent storm isn’t for the faint hearted and lifeboatmen must be prepared to go when the shout comes, this is very dangerous stuff and those volunteer must understand the cause for which they sign up for.
Please don’t fall into the US mindset that everything big must be better, that is plainly not true and not necessary. These boats aren’t cheap, but what price do you put on human life?
And Tim, I would be very proud to help, but I am driftwood and not for this island too much longer. My experience isn’t wanted due to my nationality, sad but true. Perhaps when the politicians do what is right as opposed to ranting just to get re-elected, then Cayman will be a more tolerant and safer place.
But bless you for your kind words and let’s hope someone is listening.
What is the point of dredging a channel to 25 feet when the North Sound isn’t anywhere near that deep? Yo would have to cut a channel all the way to t Barcadere. Or you could simply use GT harbour!
A ‘proper search and rescue machine’. Do you know what that is? It is something like an S92 at around $20 million plus dollars. With a crew of five, requiring at least fifteen people to provide the resilience, that is one crew on, two crews off on rotation. That is six pilots, and then the management and training structure. Then a second helicopter at $20m plus, because the maintenance is very high, otherwise you have not got the service you want. Your operating budget would need to be around 7 or 8 million a year, with a very large maintenance budget for your two helicopters. How many jobs has the police helicopter and marine unit not been able to respond to in recent years? Has anyone actually worked out the successes they have had? No, I thought not, because they have had many, and invariably do turn out and in dangerous conditions . This one one unique event, not indicative of a pattern. And how many search and rescue requirements are there. As one of the other commentators said, the best helicopter in the world would not have saved these poor souls given the delays on the information
Makes more sense than spending $300million on a cruise dock.
100% correct. When the original helicopter was bought the CIG were fully briefed and prepared to accept its limitations on SAR operations due to budgetary limitations. That decision was not necessarily wrong. Every government has to do it.
The addition of winching equipment was planned for the 135 but never took place. Having said that a large scale incident like this wth multiple casualties may only have been effectively addressed by a full service SAR unit as described above; at a huge cost, to be used rarely for that purpose. What about if there were 10/15 people in the water? How far are you prepared to go with cost? It’s all about risk V acceptable cost. At the very least maintain the equipment you have. Dont reduce the budget for them and staffing.
Any aircraft can drop a raft or beacon and relay coordinates to surface vessels – whether JMU or a volunteer staffed lifeboat brigade. RCIPS don’t necessarily need any different hardware, just functional capacity and training.
K.I.S.S.
FIX THE FOLL: (1) Marine Unit Manpower restored to establishment level.
(2) Fix/replace M/V Guardian(Faulty fuel tank / design).
(3) Stop RCIP command from “looting” the Marine Unit budget (Fuel etc).
(4) Get a proper SAR helo unit that can fly over water safely, drop rescue swimmers and recover people from water by winch/basket, drop inflatable rescue pods, and land on water in emergency (Gerome can!).
It is not rocket science, it just needs the powers that be to stop chasing their tails, be intellectually honest, stop hiding revealing reports, and do what needs to be done to protect lives at sea in a meaningful way.
Oh, and maybe we could have more POSITIVE input on the CNS postings. Smile.
Not rocket science, but needs some considerable funding. And there lies the issue
All the blame falls squarely on the Capt. of that boat that was lost as sea as well as the CIG not having proper boater licensing/training program implemented with yearly or twice yearly licensing/inspections. if that boat had properly been serviced and had proper safety gear this may never have happened. just because you Grandfather fished for daily food doesn’t mean you know WTF your doing on the ocean. Most all people and mostly Caymanians have NO boat handling training.
Hey, these guys made numerous international trips in their vessel. Their expertise in long distance navigation, particularly at night, is well known. Can we please have a little more frank discussion of who and what we are dealing with here!
Because any muppet can follow a line on a GPS, it doesn’t make them master Mariners.
They were junkie drunk traffickers, end of conversation.
Because maybe Jenkins did not want any claptrap in his report.
Does the name not give it away Royal Cayman Islands Police Service. Whose primary objective is the prevention of crime and secondly the apprehension of offenders.
They are not the coast guard or a search and rescue unit but the police. Maybe time to use some of the surplus millions on a proper coast guard/SAR unit
….or, just continue to drop public money (my money!) into slot machines.
Honestly, who cares anything about this. Nobody and the reason I say this is because, as been proven right here on CNS alone, that the only thing anyone is trying to get out of this situation if fame and fortune.
I mean really. If anyone, and I mean anyone, really cared about this issue then maybe they would want to see the facts. Documented facts no less. But no, nobody wants that. They only want to be able to say “see, see,I told you so. You should’ve picked me for the job. I saved the day”.
Nobody has thought, even though hints have been given all over the place, about who knows and has the documents that shows what’s been going on and for how long.
Nobody cares to find out the truth, they just want the fame.
This includes the media outlets as well. Nobody does investigative reporting, they expect that it will all fall and hit them on their head.
So why don’t we just move on and forget this issue, cause one thing is for sure, nothing will change. Just a lot of hot air blowing and grand standing will go on.
There is only one person who can prove anything, and the length of time it has been occurring,but nobody has asked that person.they can’t just give it away because certain rules.
But nobody cares.
So I say this then, great job, you did boy. Way to go, your a hero and deserve an award. Here’s the key to Cayman.
Now that we took care of that, lets find something else to critique so we can become even more famous.
Well. That was intense…. and vague.
If indeed this was an ill fated drug running operation with a ‘take your child to work day’ thrown in, as so many people have hinted at,
shouldn’t someone be investigating the people involved?
I am not from here so I don’t really know, but is dealing in smuggling and narco transportation not illegal in Cayman? Drugs are bad people; bad.
I am not saying that was going on in this case, but many people have alluded to it as the reason for heir boat trip.
Why no outcry for justice in this regards?
The “miscommunication” was that the JPs did not get the message no-one cared what they thought.
Please read the JP report. Most of it has nothing to do with the incident of the missing boaters. They think a review of diving deaths should be considered.
But I thought the missing boaters went fishing ??
Yep seems a bit like mission creep here, the report was supposed to be on the rescue, not whether the whole SAR is up to par. If they want a full revue, ooh I wonder who they might commission to do that, paid for of course…
It’s just saving a little face and the anti-Brits can’t see beyond their little hornets nest to realize the JPs are not refuting the report. Let em squeak, cuz that’s all they will ever do.
Even with the best search and rescue service in the Caribbean, given the delay in raising the alarm and the time the “fishermen” were in the water without lifejackets and probably unable to swim in the rough seas, I doubt they could have been saved.
How about we chastise the RCIP for not clamping down on drug running. There’s a real cause to get behind.
@1:56pm – How about we take personal responsibility for choosing to deal in drugs and illegal activities. How about we take personal responsibility for not allowing people we know to act illegally with impunity and not bring the action to the attention of authorities. Stop trying to find a culprit for this outside of the actual cause. The blame for the issue lies with the people who chose to go out in the boat.
The RCIPS response was correct given the circumstances involved. Even the JP’s recommendation is not an admonition of their activities – but of the current state of their equipment that limits their ability. If you want world class SAR – you have to pay world class prices for the equipment and for the people with the needed skills. Those people are rare in the world overall which is why they are paid well anywhere they work.
When the UK and US coastguards nip by for scheduled R&R, they should be asked if they can tack on an extra day or hours to help train the ASU and JMU with current and latest protocol and technologies. The JMU should never be understaffed nor sent out in leaking and/or non-operational equipment – not for the fortune we are allocating to the RCIPS every year.
The U.K. Coastguard does not visit the Caribbean as it is not an ocean going enforcement service. It is a domestic Search and Rescue coordination service who call upon volunteer coastguards to conduct land based SAR missions, (cliff, coastal and mud). The full time service provides officers to man full time MRCC, (Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre) bases around strategic points of the U.K. coastline.
HMCG is no longer a military force, it is now a department within the greater agency of the MCA, (Maritime and Coastguard Agency) which is overseen by the Dept of Transport.
It has no power of arrest and does not run any form a enforcement cutter squadron, with the exception of small RIB’s that enforce fishing vessel licensing and an outsourced group of ocean going rescue tugs.
Their helicopter rescue capability is outsourced to Bristow Helicopters who recruit highly experienced SAR crews from both the Royal Navy and the RAF. They also run a cadet training course for future air crew.
Now that we can see that a full report and recommendations have been submitted to CIG maybe it’s time that they should be talking to the MCA and the RNLI and requesting SAR coordination training and the implementation of a voluntary blue water and inshore lifeboat service, manned by Caymanians for Caymanians.
The U.K. is surrounded by some of the roughest and most dangerous seas in the world. It has one of the best lifeboat services on the planet, backed up by some of the most experienced SAR experts in the field. So talk to them, make the money available for volunteers to be trained and boats to be purchased.
Stop trying to point score over the deaths of innocent children and do something more than invent fantasies and theories that hold no value.
If any one out there thought that the review carried out by Mr. Jenkins would have been anything different from what the COP was spouting out then I wonder where your brains are. I believe he wrote what the COP and Madam Governor wanted him to say and that was about it. Any investigations/ reports carried out by the UK representives always end up in their favour and at our expense. Imagine they were ferried off to Little Cayman for the weekend and all the Cayman Islands got out of it that makes ant sense is what the JPs recommended . Surely they could have collaborated on it here in Grand Cayman and come up with the same results. We got suckered again, how long are we prepared to take this crap?
In fairness, there was no misconduct by the actual officers involved. It wasn’t their fault that their departments were understaffed and hampered with chronically broken equipment. However, there were obviously superiors that were responsible for those conditions and errors and they were the ones to very quickly absolve themselves and deflect blame on to the victims. Baines is literally scampering away with good references and a pay package.
Demand the seating for the second pilot on the helicopter, that so many lies have been told about. Demand information on the procurement of the boats that are used by the Marine section of the RCIPS and we will all understand the problems that are being experienced on q daily basis. Stop wasting taxpayers money, use it wisely.
All you’ll hear is the same stupid song being sung, ‘We want a Caymanian’ and not ‘We want the best and most experienced’.
Not gonna happen people, you don’t have the quality of candidate to run open ocean rescue missions in a helicopter. It’s not something you can just do, it takes a special kind of pilot with a huge amount of SAR experience to do this job, plus you’ll need highly skilled winchmen and possibly rescue divers if you follow the US model.
Is it not a single pilot helicopter? Is there an agenda here?
The interesting suggestion is that a helicopter designed primarily for law enforcement should be replaced with one designed for SAR. Now there’s an agenda quite beyond providing a job for a certain MLAs nephew.
Well grow some and go it alone, we’d all love to see how that one turns out when there’s no loans to bail you out.
Ummm, not everyone is as corrupt and self serving as you. You don’t see the world as it is , but as you are. True dat.
Bush has never done jack to improve the marine or air patrol.
So to those detractors, there was clear benefit of including two local JP’s in this process. See how easy (and routine) it is for UK bods to discard local sensitivities??
Why did CIG deliberately hold back the JP’s report? Could it be they knew that they would agree with Andy Jenkins and that didn’t suit their political aim.
Isn’t that the same thing Jenkins said?
shhhhh, let them and Keevy Boy have there 5 minutes of glory first.