The setting of the sun does not enlighten us as to where the canoe which was shipwrecked on September 28 about six kilometers from the coast of Iron. The search work did not stop in a day in which two maritime guards were involved, two maritime guards and a maritime rescue helicopter, a helicopter from the Civil Guard and another from the government of the Canary Islands, a Benemérita boat, four divers and four patrols. on the ground. In total, four boats left Nouadhibou, in Mauritania, eight days ago: one was shipwrecked, two others arrived and one was lost in the immensity of the Ocean near Meridian Island.
Also on Sunday morning, the island councils met with the Minister of Social Protection of the Government of the Canary Islands, Candelaria Delgado, and the Minister of Territorial Policy, Territorial Cohesion and Water, also responsible for emergencies, Manuel Miranda, to assess the situation and the way in which the different public administrations can collaborate.
The meeting took place at the funeral home of the municipality of La Frontera, where the nine bodies awaiting burial. Six of them will be buried in Valverde and the other three in La Frontera. The councils also agreed that tomorrow, Monday, a minute of silence will be observed in memory of the migrants, especially in the municipality of Valverde, from 12:00 p.m.
On the side of the island’s government, socialist president Alpidio Armas expressed to this newspaper his concern about the fact that this “humanitarian” drama was being used for partisan purposes. “May the privacy of the nine deceased and those we hope to locate be respected. It is time to join forces, agree on solutions and separate this humanitarian drama from sensationalism and media sensationalism” and he adds that “the marches carried out this morning by the Government of the Canary Islands – in reference to the appeal launched to the media in the funeral home of La Frontera -, “the only thing they can encourage is confrontation for unity”.
In the afternoon, suspicions were raised that it may have been possible to locate a drifting human body, following a warning issued by a Civil Guard helicopter. The Guardamar Calliope He approached the location indicated by the coordinates provided to verify the information and discovered that it was a cloth bag, a backpack from the remains of the wreckage. Each object with these characteristics can be a clue that brings the rescue teams a little closer to rescuing more bodies, but with the arrival of night and the loss of visibility of the sea guards, they return to port and it is then that everyone who sees him thinks, even if no one says it, that it will take him one more day to be able to say goodbye with dignity to more than 50 people.
This Sunday it was also learned that two of the five survivors were transferred to El Hierro Hospital, while the other three are progressing favorably.
During the day, councilor Candelaria Delgado had raised the possibility of installing a tent to protect the corpses in the main docks of the island, but the colonel of the Civil Guard of Santa Cruz de Tenerife declared during a press conference that this measure is unlikely due to their behavior over the days, the dynamics of the currents and the possibility of finding human bodies. By late afternoon, even if the special tent arrived at Guardamar Calliope, it would be deployed in case the discovery of bodies increased significantly.
Beware of the emergency channel at sea
Although from the dock it may seem that there is a world on the other side of the dock, which separates the right to life from the silence of death, at sea there is a continuous scandal of messages that remind us that a search is underway. in this corner of the Atlantic for a sunken ship, as if no one can safely sail until this matter is resolved. “PAN PAN”, or the most important emergency warning: “Safety, safety”.
Messages that are repeated tirelessly on VHF frequency 156,800, reserved exclusively for navigation emergency alerts. “The maritime canal”, which is an understandable reminder for any sailor, in any language, guarantees that the slots which today have as their objective the defense of human rights along the Canary route, the more deadly, do not die out completely. of the world. They know that if the boats don’t reach El Hierro, they won’t get anywhere, that there are boats of corpses that have sailed the Atlantic Ocean without names or faces.
