20 feared dead in Belize after dive boat capsizes in hurricane

Associated Press Writer

BELIZE CITY, Belize (AP) -- A live-aboard dive boat capsized as Hurricane Iris roared into Belize, and the owners said Tuesday that as many as 20 people were feared dead.

Twenty-eight people, most of them tourists from Virginia, were aboard the MV Wave Dancer as Iris hit southern Belize with 140-mph winds Monday night, said Patricia Rose, spokeswoman for Peter Rose Diving in Miami.

She said eight survivors had been accounted for Tuesday morning. The boat had been chartered by the Richmond Dive Club of Richmond, Va.

"A strong storm surge lifted the boat in the air, snapping the line and capsizing it. The boat may have hit a wall or the dock. It was secured," she said.

The 120-foot boat had been tied to a dock in a mangrove along with other dive boats and commercial boats near Big Creek, close to where the storm came ashore, some 80 miles south-southwest of Belize City.

"Belize City was evacuated so we could not put the guests in a hotel. We were forced to keep them on the boat," she said.

The boat capsized in approximately 12 feet of water. It did not sink, but turned on its side.

"We're hoping for survivors but I don't know that it's likely," she said.

Local radio stations reported that Iris flattened several coastal towns as it hit Monday night, destroying hundreds of houses. It was not immediately clear if there were other deaths.

The hurricane raised seas by 13 to 18 feet above normal, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, and forecasters predicted rainfall totals of five eight inches.

The storm crossed most of the Central American isthmus overnight. By morning, Iris had weakened to tropical depression centered about 45 miles southeast of Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico.

The British Army, which has 250 soldiers in Belize at a training center, pledged to help in rescue operations.

"Reports we have received suggest that parts of the country where it hit hardest have taken a very bad battering," said Major John Knopp, second-in-command of the British Army Training Support Unit in Ladyville, 12 miles north of Belize City.

In Placencia, a fishing village and resort town of several hundred people where many homes are small wooden structures on stilts, numerous houses were lost, said Andrea Villanueva.

"Our own roof went and most of the houses went down," Villanueva told local LOVE-FM radio as the hurricane's eye passed over late Monday. "But we're experiencing a calm right now."

The radio announcer told Villanueva to stay inside, reminding him the eye of the hurricane is passing over and winds would come quickly.

North of the storm, intermittent heavy rains and winds blew through Belize City, a low-lying, seaside city of 65,000 people where soldiers went door to door to evacuate people from their homes.

The streets, some of which had flooded, were deserted late Monday and homes and businesses alike were boarded up. The nation's capital was moved inland to Belmopan after Hurricane Hattie destroyed much of Belize City in 1961.

Civil defense authorities in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras implemented states of alert in anticipation of heavy rains from Iris, and thousands of people left low-lying areas for higher ground.