Three survivors of boat accident in hurricane return home

NORFOLK, Va. -- Two more bodies were recovered Thursday from a U.S.-chartered dive boat that capsized off Belize during Hurricane Iris, bringing the death toll from the storm to 21.

The storm capsized the MV Wave Dancer, a U.S. boat with 28 passengers and crew aboard -- including 20 members of a Richmond, Va., dive club -- moored in the relatively protected port at Big Creek, 80 miles south of Belize City.

"Why are we here and they're not?" asked Mary Lou Hayden, one of 20 dive club members who was on board the 12-foot MV Wave Dancer when it capsized. "I was praying for our friends."

Hayden, David DeBarger and Richard Patterson were the only club members to survive. They flew back to Norfolk International Airport on Wednesday.

Veteran diver Jim McNeal, owner of The Dive Shop in Richmond, joined a dozen relatives, friends and colleagues to welcome them home.

"We've come down here to provide support because we're sure these people have gone through hell," McNeal said. "As much as we've lost people, they were there."

Hurricane Iris swept through a narrow corridor of southern Belize on Monday, its 140-mph winds wiping out entire villages, flattening homes, damaging resorts and eliminating banana crops.

One person from the boat and two Canadians staying in one of the towns hit by Iris remain missing.

Belize officials said the hurricane's storm surge of 13 to 18 feet, with a ferocious wind and high waves, snapped the Wave Dancer's lines and toppled it.

The chairman of the village near where the boat was moored said that as Iris neared, he urged the captain of the Belize Aggressor III, a boat carrying 10 other divers, to bring them ashore.

But he said he did not speak with the captain of the Wave Dancer.