Investigation Begins Into Circumstances Leading to Drowning of Tour Guide
The family of tour guide, thirty-nine-year-old Julio Escobar will miss him most around this time of the year, simply because it was on Christmas Eve that he drowned in flash floods that came downriver from the Maya Mountains. Caves Branch has been known over the last three decades as one of the tour destinations that offers one of the safest water adventure tours because of the sound safety protocols its guides are required to follow. But something went wrong on Christmas Eve and as a result, an investigation has commenced to determine why Escobar drowned. From all accounts thus far, he was wearing a helmet and had a flotation device with him, but when Escobar got caught in the strong currents, he was flung off his tube. Reports are that he never followed his colleagues’ shouts of encouragement to grab onto the tube that was beside him in the water. Instead, from what we were told, he tried to swim to safety on his own but got pulled under the currents. Director of Quality Management, Capacity Development, and Cruise at the B.T.B., Abil Castaneda told News Five that the private tour company that conducts tours where Escobar drowned has an extensive emergency protocol system. However, an investigation has begun to determine if anyone is culpable for his death.
Abil Castaneda
Abil Castaneda, Dir., Quality Management, Capacity Development, Cruise, B.T.B.
“We at all times are imploring on our tour operators to take all the safety precautions and measures that they have indicated that they will take when they come and license with us. I do know that Caves Branch, for instance, that is the tour operator that was involved, they have extensive emergency protocols. In fact, every tour operator that is licensed with us must submit an emergency plan; they must submit a list of all their equipment that they are using on their tours; and they also must submit a very detailed description as to what type of tours they provide and what they will do in the case of emergencies, so in the review of those we know that, for instance, their tour guides are trained in swift rescue operations and they’re prepared at the end of the day. But, as you can imagine, the use of equipment is something that is – our legislation speaks to it – it is the tour operators to ensure that they are providing the safety equipment not only to the guests but also to the tour guides and the people that are taking them. This is a requirement. And what this has led (to) is that we are requesting an incident report, both from out Tourism Police Unit as well as from the tour operator and at the B.T.B. we do have a mechanism to review these incidents to see if at all there was any sort of discrepancies in the steps that were taken, to address this issue. We know, for instance, in the review of the emergency plan for Caves Branch, they have a system in place where they check the water levels periodically on a day especially during this time because of rain. However, we understand that what happened was very unexpected because it happened also in the ATM area.”
