Concern mounts for Belizeans in New York
If the scenario that unfolded today in the United States of America was part of a script for a proposed movie, it would be rejected as being too farfetched. But the hijacking of four large U.S. airliners and the subsequent crashing of three of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon was not a work of fiction; it was an all too real act of mass murder and terrorism, the scale of which the world has never before seen. But today’s tragedy did not just effect the United States. Thousands of Belizeans live in the New York area, many in Manhattan and a significant number work in the World Trade Center. Earlier this afternoon News 5’s Stewart Krohn spoke to Ambassador Stuart Leslie, Belize’s permanent representative to the United Nations, to find out if there was news about our loved ones in New York.
Ambassador Stuart Leslie, Via Phone from New York
“Our estimates show that there are over fifty or sixty thousand Belizeans who live in the New York metropolitan area. Considering the fact that over fifty thousand people work just in those two buildings that are the World Trade Center, it is clear that there are Belizeans who would have been down there at this time. I can report to you officially that there are some people who are Belizean-Americans who are missing; their families are very concerned. We’re not going to release any names of those people, and we continue to hope that they’re somewhere in the area, that they were able to get out. I know for a fact that there was a bunch of nurses of Belizean extraction, who worked at the World Trade Center, and they were on the nineteenth floor. The question is if they were able to make it outside. That’s the first building that collapsed on the nineteenth floor. We’re not sure if they were able to get out of the vicinity in time. We’re still trying, this mission, to ascertain whether there is any word on those people. But the other problem we have in New York City right now, is that a lot of the telephone lines are clogged, lines are jammed up and we can’t really get to families. What we have been instructed to do by our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. David Gibson, is to try and get in touch with the emergency services here in New York and to have our embassy open as much as possible to facilitate those Belizeans who may want to know about their loved ones.”
Stewart Krohn
“Has this tragedy affected the workings of Belize’s own mission either to the United Nations or our consular centre in Manhattan?”
Stuart Leslie
“Yes it has. We operate two offices here in New York, one that works especially with our consular services and the other one that deals with our diplomatic work with the United Nations. First of all, one of our offices had to be shut down because our consular service office is housed in a building that is shared by the Israeli consulate and the Israeli mission and that building is under high alert and so they have evacuated us. Subsequently, that has closed down our consular operations indefinitely. We have asked our embassy in Washington to take on the load until it can be determined by the City of New York that it is safe for us to return our employers in that building. Since this is not a priority, when people can return to work, I am sure that we will have to keep that office closed until at least the end of the week. In the meantime, we continue to try to do all our functions out of the office that handles the diplomatic work. However, we will only be dealing with emergency situations at this point.”
Stewart Krohn
“Those Belizeans here at home who are terribly concerned about friends and relatives in the New York area, is there anyway that they can find out about their loved ones?”
Stuart Leslie
“There are two things that they can do. One is the electronic system is still working, so if you have friends in the New York area, you can still contact them by electronic mail, by email. If they live in areas like Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx where they haven’t been affected, like Manhattan then I think those systems are fully operational. If you try to get through and don’t get through, then just be patient because it’s not that the telephone lines are down, it’s just that they are clogged with people trying to find out. With respect to the mission of Belize, we would be able to help you if you called us and gave a telephone number of how to contact a relative; we would do that for you. You can also write to us with this information at our mission electronic mailing system, which is blzun@aol.com, or call our mission office at 212-593-0999. In addition to that, what we know at this point is what you are seeing on CNN. The United Nations has been closed down, which is a large part of our communications network. Most of the embassies in New York are closed, everybody is on high alert. Public transportation is just being restored, and so this is something that you see in the movies, or people joke about. The only word I can describe it as is surreal.”
