Coast Guard officials continued its search off the Florida coast Wednesday for 38 people missing what a suspected human smuggling boat capsized over the weekend. The video above includes the scene near where the boat went missing, as well as clips from a Wednesday Coast Guard news conference. So far, one body has been recovered, and there is one known survivor. According to Coast Guard Capt. Jo-Ann F. Burdian, a merchant vessel spotted the survivor about 40 miles off Fort Pierce Tuesday, sitting alone on the overturned hull of the boat.
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“The survivor reported leaving Bimini Saturday evening with 39 other people on board the vessel,” Capt. Burdian said Wednesday. “The vessel capsized shortly after they departed due to severe weather in the area. The survivor was not wearing a life jacket and reported that no one else on board was wearing a life jacket. The survivor’s condition is stable.”
The survivor was brought to a hospital with symptoms of dehydration and sun exposure and is now in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security.
Bimini is a small island in the Bahamas, located about 55 miles east of Miami and about 100 miles south of where the survivor was found. Burdian said the Coast Guard suspects “this is a case of human smuggling” because the boat appeared to be headed on “a normal route for human smuggling from the Bahamas into the southeast U.S.”
“Homeland Security Investigations is leading the investigation of the facts and backgrounds into that component of this case,” Burdian said. “My focus remains on search and rescue.”
After the Coast Guard was notified of the spotted survivor, crews began searching around the clock for the human smuggling boat. By Wednesday morning, crews on at least four ships and five aircraft scanned a vast area about the size of New Jersey. Burdian described the search as “dire.”
“The longer they remain in the water without food, without water, exposed to the marine environment, the sun, the sea conditions, it is every moment that passes it becomes much more dire and unlikely that anyone could survive in those conditions,” Burdian said.
Wednesday’s weather forecast called for rain and possible thunderstorms in the search area, with swells cresting at 2 to 3 feet and winds blowing at 12 to 15 mph.
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