By Antonio Dey | HGP Nightly News |
ARTHUR CHUNG CONFERENCE CENTRE, LILIENDAAL — Testifying before the five-member Presidential Commission of Inquiry (CoI), Emergency Operations Coordinator at the Maritime Administration Department (MARAD), Captain John Flores, defended the speed and coordination of the search-and-rescue mission launched for the sunken MV Barima, characterizing the deployment as “more than quick, more than adequate.”
Flores explained that emergency personnel were actively managing another maritime distress case involving a troubled fishing vessel when the initial emergency alerts concerning the MV Barima were received on the night of July 18, 2026.
While defending the operational timeline and revealing that 53 survivors were pulled from the Atlantic by 5:13 AM on Sunday, July 19, Captain Flores conceded that the state’s response craft faced severe limitations during darkness. He also confirmed that Guyana’s newly outfitted Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) was not formally commissioned or fully operational when the disaster struck, forcing responders to rely on improvised communication tools, including personal mobile devices and commercial Starlink internet connections.
The Timeline: Managing Simultaneous Emergencies in the Dark
Captain Flores detailed the initial operational hours, explaining that search-and-rescue assets executed a phased tactical deployment:
- Simultaneous Operations: MARAD and Coast Guard operations teams were already mobilized and plotting search coordinates for a distressed fishing vessel earlier that evening, meaning watchstanders and plotting charts were already active when the Barima’s signal surfaced.
- Verification vs. Full Transition: Emergency personnel initiated situational assessments while vessels were steaming toward the operational zone, requiring coordinators to verify the authenticity of the alert before committing all state assets.
- Rapid Survivor Recoveries: Flores pointed to field logs showing that by 5:13 AM on July 19, participating rescue craft had already pulled 53 survivors from the water and initiated transport toward safety bases.
“Our response, which is phased response, were not slow. We responded properly… Early in the evening we were already working on another case, so they were already doing SAR plotting… there was no delay in how we get to the Coast Guard,” Flores testified.
Wreck Located on Day 3: International Task Force Mobilized
The coordinator outlined the wider scope of the search effort, which expanded into a multi-national maritime operation across regional waters:
- Locating the Hull: The submerged wreckage of the MV Barima was positively pinpointed on the ocean floor at approximately 4:00 PM on Monday, July 20, 2026.
- Regional Deployments: As the operation transitioned from immediate surface rescue to extended salvage, body recovery, and perimeter sweeps, international military assets were integrated into the search grid, including offshore patrol vessels from the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard and specialized units from Brazil.
- Duration: The intensive offshore search-and-recovery campaign remained active for nearly two weeks, concluding on July 30, 2026.
Equipment Installed but Inactive: The MRCC Gap
Despite maintaining that first responders acted with urgency, Captain Flores conceded that critical shore-based coordination infrastructure remained incomplete:
- Uncommissioned MRCC: The establishment of a dedicated Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre was initiated in March 2025 following a comprehensive maritime audit. While modern hardware designed to intercept direct satellite distress signals was physically installed, the facility had not completed operational staff handover or final technical commissioning.
- Ad-Hoc Tactical Communications: In the absence of a fully operational central command floor, emergency coordinators managed inter-agency mobilization through a patchwork of personal cellular phones, satellite radios, and commercial Starlink terminals.
- Night-Operating Limitations: Flores acknowledged that state search craft lacked specialized forward-looking thermal or optical systems optimized for pitch-black offshore searches, identifying night-search capacity as an urgent area requiring institutional capital expenditure.
The inquiry, presided over by Chairman Justice Godfrey Smith, SC, continues public evidentiary sessions at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, evaluating whether regulatory inertia, equipment procurement delays, and inter-agency gaps contributed to the loss of life.
