Blaze Consumes Large Portion of Fantasy Island Resort

Wilmer Guerrero, Roatan’s fire chief, said getting water to Ezekiel Cay, where the hotel is located, was difficult because the wooden bridge leading there could not support heavy water trucks. The hotel opened in 1989, and the 250-foot wooden bridge could not support the 50,000-pound weight of a fire truck carrying 3,000 gallons of water.

At the time of the fire, Fantasy Island was hosting about 60 guests. While guests were safely evacuated to nearby hotels, some lost personal items and documents.

The fire spread because of the high heat and the highly flammable wooden structure of the hotel resort. The buildings formed one continuous structure that allowed the fire to spread with little impediment.

Almost half of the resort was destroyed.

The wind blew from east to west, engulfing the hotel’s wooden structure. The recently renovated lobby, reception area, dining area, kitchen, convention center and discotheque were all consumed by the fire. Also, 36 of the 108 rooms at Fantasy Island were destroyed. In the end, almost half of the resort was destroyed.

The eastern wing of the hotel was spared thanks to heavy machinery. A heavy digger demolished part of the hotel, creating space between the building already on fire and the hotel rooms to the east.

According to Elvin Canales, chief of Fire Department Company B in Dixon Cove, about 900 meters of 2.5-inch water hose was connected to cisterns on the main island. The hotel used two excavators to destroy part of the building so the fire would not spread to the eastern side of the hotel. “Airport firefighters provided the hoses,” Canales said.

The firefighters also placed their only floating water pump, a Kawasaki FJ180V, inside the Fantasy Island swimming pool. Pumping at a rate of 260 gallons of water per minute, the pump was eventually damaged by the intense heat generated by the fire.

There were several devastating fires on Roatan in the past three years. According to Canales, the Fantasy Island fire, alongside the 2024 Roatan Public Hospital fire, are the largest structure fires in Roatan in the 21st century. The French Harbour Hill neighborhood suffered a fire that destroyed 25 to 30 homes in 1990. The Agua Azul packing plant also was destroyed by two fires.

An Affordable Community that Runs Itself

In 2004, Santamaría was studying at the Pedagogical University in La Ceiba and already teaching on Roatan. While renting an apartment on the island, he asked himself if it would be possible to build an affordable home there. He contacted FUNDEVI, an NGO that focuses on assisting Honduran families without any homes, or land to build homes. The FUNDEVIS initial answer was that the land was too expensive; Santamaría persisted and obliged himself to find land, and coordinated all the construction for the future homes.

He persisted, and in 2006 the 10 acre development of 138 homes broke ground. Its residents decided to name the colonia after Elmer’s last name. “Santa María is a blessed place,” said Elmer Santamaría. “Thanks God and FUNDEVI we could have purchased the land [lots] for Lps. 50,000.” That was around $3,000 back then, and now those 10×12 meter lots with houses sell for Lps. 700,000 and more.

When the project broke ground, Dixon Cove was a place few people knew about. Santamaría seemed far away, not only as far as location on the main road, it was also two hundred meters up a dirt road in then typical island bush. “There was nothing around our homes, just forests,” remembers Santamaría. In those times there was no Mahogany Bay, no Galaxy Wave, and no Dixon Cove Municipal Building. These all came in the years following the establishment of the housing development.

Everyone paid off their homes. They are free.

The cay in constructing Santamaría was keeping costs to the minimum. The workers for the project came from Yoro, the house’s doors also came from Yoro, and cement came from La Ceiba. “We were buying sand from the mainland. We were buying from hardware store in Colón to save money,” remembers the construction phase Elmer Santamaría.

The home owners had 10 years to pay off their loans. “FUNDEVI gave us the keys to our homes and we started paying. Now everyone paid off their homes. They are free,” said Elmer.

As time went on and their families grew, many Santamaría residents took out additional loans to fund the expansion of their homes. Especially popular with the small lenders were lending institutions such as IMPREMA and Banco de los Trabajadores.

The homeowners created a patronato, and set a system at keeping their community safe and attractive. The community focused on sobriety and family values in order to assure safety. There are four pulpería stores at Santa María, and every one of them signed a pledge not to sell alcoholic beverages. “We don’t allow sell of alcoholic drinks here, we don’t permit billiard halls,” says Elmer.

As Elmer Santamaría is the founder of the community, everyone knows him here and says hello as he walks by. Elmer is currently the treasurer of the Santa María patronato and in the afternoons he works at José Santos Guardiola High School. He has a large farm near La Ceiba that produces rambutan fruit plantains, citrus, and cacao. He exports rambutan to USA via El Salvador.

According to Elmer Santamaría, 2,500 people now live in the Dixon Cove area. Directly to the north of Santa María there is Colonia Dulce María, and the future public hospital is a walk away to the west.

Santa María is home to an eclectic mixture of mainlanders.

Today, Santa María is home to an eclectic mixture of mainlanders who came to the island in the last 20 years. Prof. Miguel Angel Mathias, 76, who has lived across the street from the Colonia say it is a safe place. Prof Mathis lives next door to the Catholic Church and has the keys to the buildings. The Colonia has also two evangelical prayer halls and a Seventh Day Adventist Church.

The community has eight streets running east to west. Several of them are soon to be paved. Santa María has a football field, a children’s playground, and a two-story school building. The school is named after Graciela Ofelia Ramos and it houses a kindergarten, a grade school, and a high school. Some colonia projects are built with funds from water fees, as every house in the Colonia pays Lps. 250 for water access.

It is still very difficult to organize and construct a low income housing community on Roatan. Almost twenty years no other FUNDEVI project has been done on the island. Elmer believes it could be done, but it needs someone who will be the driving force behind the entire effort.

After a Fire, Three Hospitals are being Built on the Island

Roatan has found itself in a health crisis. On April 19, around 9pm, Roatan Public Hospital in Coxen Hole burned down in a spectacular fire. The fire destroyed 95% of the 33 year old building except for a portion of the office annex.
No one was killed or gravely injured in the fire and 60 interned patients were transferred to two nearby private island hospitals. Wood Medical Center in Coxen Hole received most of the patients and the private Hospital Centro Medico Sampedrano (CEMESA) received another dozen. “All the emergencies were attended until May 10 [for] free,” said Dr. Jackie Wood, owner of the Wood Medical Center who also helped to build the original public hospital in 1991. “My heart was broken and I cried all night. You do not imagine what I feel to see all that work [turn to] ashes.”
The firemen concluded that faulty electric wiring was the reason for the fire. “A couple years back we had a fire in a maternity room for the same reason,” said Dr. Wood.
The spring of 2024 has been full of fires breaking out all over Roatan. There has been very little rain since the rainy season ended on the island in March. Dry as bone trees and cohunes became prone to catching fire and strong winds made things especially difficult to handle.

While the fire was a disaster, it also became an opportunity to quickly and efficiently upgrade the islands hospital facilities. While the public hospital building was gone there were plenty of doctors, underutilized private clinics, a network of community clinics, a semi finished hospital in Dixon Cove, and there was an 18,000 square foot Adventist center.

Instead of quickly finishing the new public hospital in Dixon Cove, the central government decided to build a “temporary” hospital in Coxen Hole. Instead of using facilities that are available, the government set up tents in hot weather at Julio Galindo stadium in Coxen Hole.

“My heart was broken and I cried all night.”

Another site in Loma Linda area of Coxen Hole was chosen by the central government as a site for an emergency, provisional 40 bed hospital and is estimated to cost 100-150 Million Lps. It has been planned to be finished in 90 days, but due to a complicated, heavily sloped site, that is unlikely to happen.

The Loma Linda hospital site is adorned with a huge poster “Xiomara Sí Cumple,” – “Xiomara does deliver.” In fact after the fire and presidential visit the island was dotted with “Xiomara Sí Cumple” signs. There is one such poster at the Roatan international airport, one in Dixon Cove, one in Loma Linda and one at Coxen Hole stadium. A kilometer away, while central government authorities were erecting those signs, Roatan Municipality completely demolished the burned out hospital and practically flattened the old hospital site.

All in all, the facility that was closest to being able to function as a temporary hospital was the Adventist center in French Harbour. Little Friends Foundation along with Roatan Municipality operated the COVID center at the Adventist center back in 2020. While the second story of the large building was used for consultations and beds, the first story is being readied to function as an emergency center for the emergency temporary hospital before the provisional hospital is finished and before the new hospital in Dixon Cove is completed.

Six weeks after the fire things are far for clear for many islanders in need of medical attention and confusion still persisted. “The ambulances take you from the street and don’t even know where to take you,” said Steven Guillen, president of Little Friends Foundation, a NGO that was in charge of building the Dixon Cove hospital facility. “If you are dying, you have to go to CEMESA.”

In May a woman in labor was asked for money from treatment at Woods Medical Center, she didn’t have the funds, so she was transferred to CEMESA designated as an emergency care center. The transport she was using broke down and she was transferred to another vehicle. By the time she arrived at CEMESA it was too late and she died.

That could have been avoided. The Adventist center was ready to operate two weeks after the hospital fire. The current construction work on the hospital is being paid by the Roatan Municipality and donations. There is a blood testing center for TB and HIV being built as well.

For the time being, nurses and doctors are allocated to several centers around the island. While Roatan Municipality is financially and technically capable of building, even equipping a public hospital, it does not feel capable of running the hospital with accredited and paid staff – that is a step too far.

The history of the 20,000 square foot Roatan Public hospital goes back to 1991. According to Dr. Jackie Wood, it cost the government $7 million to build. It could have been much more, but many good willed people helped it along. “Equipment was donated from the United Kingdom government (…) donations from Roatan people and private companies from Roatan and La Ceiba and the central government,” said Dr. Wood.

The island outgrew the medical facility within a couple decades, but the road to the new public hospital has had been fret with hopes, mistakes, delays, and wishful thinking.

In 2006, after 15 years of the Roatan Hospital serving the public, then Mayor Dale Jackson decided that it was time to build a new hospital. Land in Dixon Cove was purchased as “an emergency purchase.” Eighteen years later that emergency still hasn’t been resolved.

The one million dollar land cost paid was an extremely high cost for the municipality. It took the next administration of Mayor Julio Galindo to pay off the purchase completely. There was nothing done during the Mayor Dorn Ebanks tenure.

While the fire was a disaster, it also became an opportunity.

When Jerry Hynds became mayor in 2018, he was able to secure a $2 million donation from Kelcy Warren, US billionaire and owner of RECO, for the construction of the hospital in Dixon Cove. “When the funds ran out the Municipality started using some of their own funds to complete the gray work. “The original discussions were that the Municipality would do the gray work and they would finish the hospital,” says Guillen. Windows, doors, some of the sewage and water infrastructure was also finished. Roatan municipality spent $500,000 and within a couple of years there was a large, 75,000 square foot two story building sitting on a hill in Dixon Cove.

In Honduras many things are accomplished when local and central government belong to the same political party, that was not the case with National Party in Tegus and Liberal party on Roatan. “ [Mayor] Jerry [Hynds] said: ‘If they [central government] are not going to join, we are going to finish it,” said Guillen. “He had it in his mind that he was going to finish it one way or another.”

In fact the construction of the new public hospital was a joint effort and not only Kelcy Warren’s donation and municipal tax dollars funded it. “May people donated freight, equipment time and helped to reduce costs,” said Guillen. While these donations were not enumerated by Little Friends Foundation, they likely run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 2022 the 75,000 square foot Dixon Cove hospital building has been finished in raw state with windows and doors placed. The building sits on 8.3 acres site and there is a basement. Electric, sewer and gas lines could be installed as per requirement.

“There were verbal agreements, but never any written agreements with any administration,” said Guillen. Several visits by central government contracted engineers and architects took place. Recommendations were made, fulfilled, but nothing was put on paper and signed. “Every time the central government sent a crew of engineers they came up with a list of changes. Moving and creating walls, doors,” said Guillen.

The reality was that Roatan’s politicians were working with best intentions in a constantly evolving political climate back in Tegucigalpa. “The idea was to pass the facility into the hands of the Honduran health ministry in a raw state, and for them to finish it up to their standards,” said Guillen. According to Guillen the land title has been transferred to the national government years ago.

After Ximara Castro’s Libre Party won the national elections in November 2021 the relationship between Roatan Municipality and José Manuel Matheu, Honduran Health Minister under President Xiomara Castro, was going well. “We had a very good relationship with him. He brought in IDB [International Development Bank],” said Guillen. That all ended when in December 2023 Matheu was replaced with Carlos Aguilar. Since nothing was written down and agreed, Municipality was left holding the bag.

After the public hospital burned down a political turf war for credit as far as who is building what with whom’s money on Roatan intensified. It seems that Honduran president’s Libre Party was not willing to give credit to local authorities who are affiliated with the Liberal Party.

Then there was the bigger issue. If the new Roatan hospital was to be finishing with locally done contractors and donated equipment there would no way for big players to make money and make themselves seem indispensable. If local authorities would solve their own infrastructure and health problems, like Roatan has attempted, there would be no need for dependency on international loan institutions. That would mean 2000 bankers and bureaucrats in IDB Washington DC headquarters would lose their salaries, and that cannot be.

According to Honduran authorities $47 million dollars is now needed to finish the new hospital and equip it. The around $2.5 million spent on the building by Warren and Municipality is a rounding error of the estimated remaining costs. Now plenty of companies will have an opportunity to skim off the very high top and make money in the bonanza.

Roatan Municipality is financially and technically capable of building, even equipping a public hospital.

Local authorities say, that the building could be finished and equipped and ready to open for a fraction of that sum. “We could get all the equipment in very good condition donated,” said Guillen.

That is unlikely to happen. Since 2010 IDB has allocated 35% of its annual loan approval to “small and vulnerable” members and Honduras is qualified as one of them. IDB constantly needs new projects to allocate millions, and tens of millions of loans. Finding donors for a new public hospital is good business for IDB and good for its bottom line.

For average islanders worried about their health, the money, the funding and technical matters are too complicated to contemplate. Yet, the fact is there is money to be made loaning out money. There is plenty of money to be made in the construction of a new hospital and plenty of entities are eyeing the Roatan project.

It is the central government that decides what the municipalities need, often with a faulty understanding of population dynamics and local idiosyncrasies. This is how Roatan Island ended up with a Coxen Hole desalination plant and José Santos Guardiola with a garbage dump in Punta Blanca that never opened. These white elephants were paid from loans and grants by IDF and Inter American Development Bank. These projects are expensive and justify the existence of large international lending institutions.

The sad part is not only about the debt that is unnecessarily created, it is also that Honduras does need government investment in other parts of the country and is not getting it. One such example is the rebuilding of Canal Maya (In the Sula Valley, Mainland Honduras) that was destroyed in the 2020 Hurricane season, yet there are no funds and no one to rebuild it.

Other than IDB, another winner in this situation and all this chaos could be CEMESA. They have secured an agreement with government for treatment of patients. What is not known is how much CEMESA charges the government for these services. CEMESA prices are high, an appendix surgery can cost Lps.50,000 or more.

After the fire, a fund was set up out of which CEMESA is paid by Ministry of Health and Ministry of Finances. “CEMESA don’t have 11 million Lps. This in an insurance fund,” said Doctor Lastenia Cruz, Roatan Hospital Director, on May 29. “We are in front of CEMESA, we are meeting them constantly.”

There is a great contrast with how government and private business deal with a fire, and efficient restructuring. For example Waldina’s Tapestry shop, a private business that burned to the ground in French Harbour in February 29, 2024. With very few resources, but with much motivation, the owner was able to rebuild and reopen her upholstery and sail repair business within weeks of the fire. A great contrast to the paralysis and confusion of the central government after the Roatan hospital fire.

At the end of June there was no agreement what to call the French Harbour Adventist hospital facility. Some islanders still call it the Adventist Center, some call it Adventist Hospital, and some still call it the COVID Center.

Still the Adventist Center has been receiving plenty of non emergency patients. On May 27, Aldin Ebanks, a patient from Coxen Hole, went to Wood Clinic in Coxen Hole where he was told to go CEMESA. At CEMESA he was told to go to the Adventist center. All this took time, money, and transport expense. He was diagnosed with water in his lungs, and treated at the Adventist Center.

Roatan’s politicians were working with best intentions in a constantly evolving political climate.

The Adventist center is now open 24 hours a day and the number of specialists working at the Adventist center has been gradually increasing. “The Adventist center opening will cover all the services required by the population,” said Guillen. “They have greater capacity than the original public hospital.”

There is a plan to use both the downstairs and upstairs of the Adventist Center. The Municipal is making plans to turn the two story building into a fully functional hospital. The facility is actually larger than the original public hospital in Coxen Hole.“We are trying to centralize everything here,” said Guillen.

While the Adventist organization is letting the Honduran ministry of health use the facility without a written contract. Again, this could lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. Who pays for electricity costs, for maintenance costs, or for damages is not 100% clear. “They [central government] should work with the Municipality to set up this [Adventist Center],” said Guillen. “We don’t know how long they will be on temporary basis.”

Some consultation services were decentralized from the public hospital to community clinics outside of big towns. The recently opened clinic in Flowers Bay is picking up plenty of work.

The island’s medical situation will clear itself out in a matter of a year, or two. There is one question that remains and that is whether perhaps the central government and some international organizations, despite what they say and want you to believe, are not there to help you in the most sensible and efficient way, but to exploit your problems to the advantage on interest groups.

Many of us agree to pretend that police, health, education and emigration services are here to help. We are afraid to admit how inefficient, malevolent and expensive these government entities are. The cost of realizing that would be we would have to do something about it. It is easier just to go on pretending.

$47 million dollars is now needed to finish the new hospital.

A New Roads Should Create New Opportunities

Ten or fifteen years ago, the Roatan Municipality’s budget was not sufficient for such an ambitious project. Now, with an annual municipal income of over $10 million, the municipality has been able to embark on larger scale projects. “We have been making roads for about five to six years now, so everyone knew that this was going to happen at one point,” says Ing. Ricardo Castillo, infrastructure chief of the Roatan Municipality.

This summer, the municipality is focused on the Sandy Bay road building. Employing 120 road construction workers, the 8.3 km project − which began on September 20, 2022 in Sandy Bay − is expected to be completed in October 2023.

The nine meter wide road will contain two three and a half meter lanes and a one meter lane for walking or cycling. Using state of the art 5200 PSI concrete, the road is expected to last for thirty years.

The road’s most challenging segment is between Sandy Bay’s Ramírez and Anthony’s Key. By the end of June, the Municipality was 1.2 kilometers away from West End with the dirt work.

“A proper asphalt road should last 15 to 20 years without any maintenance,” said Castillo. Islanders got nearly double that lifespan out of their Sandy Bay road, which was originally built in the 1980s. Despite numerous repairs and emergency measures, the road survived nearly 40 years. Since 2010, funds have been available for pothole repairs and maintenance to prevent the road from deteriorating.

Most challenging segment is between Sandy Bay’s Ramírez and Anthony’s Key.

White topping road around 500 culverts are planned to be installed in the Mud Hole to West End. “We make them bigger, we stabilize the area around them,” says Ing. Castillo. “We are taking everything that is less than 36 inches and putting brand new material.”

As the road widens, Roatan Electrical Company [RECO] moves electrical posts at their own expense, a process that started in 2018. “It gets a little bit rough, but in the end they do help us out,” says Ing. Castillo. A few RECO posts are waiting to be moved in Dixon Cove. Once that is done, the Municipal can finish sidewalks and cycling lanes in that area.

IDECA won the concrete paving contract for the road. Their winning bid came in at around 59 million Lps. ($2.4 million USD). The entirety of the project is estimated to cost the Municipality and the Roatan taxpayers Lps. 155 million ($6.3 million USD).

In the end, the road construction costs on the island are pretty competitive with road construction costs on the Honduran mainland. The key to that is doing the roadwork part of the road paving projects in house.

On the new and rebuilding road projects, the work is typically divided into two parts. The contractor does the concrete paving of the road, but beforehand, the Municipality constructs the earthwork, culvert, and gullies and sidewalks. They negotiate with property owners and easements, or access issues. “We give it a lot of attention, since we are from here,” says Ing. Castillo. “We don’t tend to buy land to build roads, but people tend to see how their property value could increase.”

According to Ing. Castillo, Roatan Municipality spends around Lps. 20 − Lps. 22 million per kilometer of road and, all costs included. “That, in the end, is the reason why we do what we do,” says Ing. Castillo. “We know the people, we know the work, and we know what to do. The neighbors usually try to help us out with the road construction.” That would not always be the case with a mainland company, whose employees don’t know or understand the island or its people.

There are two other sections of the PO-35 national road to be rebuilt. There is a 2.3 kilometer road from Mud Hole to the KIX scheduled to follow in 2024. The most complex part will be the white topping of the PO-35, the 1.5 kilometer road from the KIX sporting complex to the Roatan Airport.

The 1.5 kilometer road was sent out to an outside company for design, as it is the most complex portion of the island’s main road system. “We want an over bridge and some big construction on the site,” said Ing. Castillo. The sewer and rain escapes are a big issue in the steep terrain of the road cutting across Coxen Hole between the airport and Calle Ocho. That is planned to be done in late 2024.

There are two other sections of the PO-35 national road to be rebuilt.

There are some interesting features of the island’s revitalized road system. The Mud Hole intersection is to receive a traffic roundabout, the biggest one on the island. Coxen Hole center road will have three lanes of traffic, and the road will be reduced to two lanes around the KIX sporting complex on the north side of Coxen Hole.

There are more possibilities of roads the Municipality is looking at: a northern road that starts in West End, continues to Palmetto, climbs to Crawfish Rock, descends to the Pristine Bay roundabout, and connects to the Big Bight road and eventually ends at Plan Grande. All that is possible thanks to the heavy machinery that the Roatan Municipality owns. Municipality has begun dirt work on the old Palmetto to Tres Flores road. The paving for that portion is expected for 2024.

The municipality has gained much-needed experience in the road paving business. The stretch between Island Saloon and the oxidation pond was perhaps the most challenging earthwork in the process of rebuilding the municipality’s road system. The municipal was built in two months. “That was pretty hectic. We moved 1500 tons of dirt there,” said Ing. Castillo.

By the Madeyso store and by the Megaplaza mall the municipal had to move dirt out and replace it with rock to stabilize the road’s substrate. As much as 15 feet of dirt had to be moved and replaced.

Five Die in Roatan’s Biggest Air Disaster to Date

The Roatan firemen pulled out the crash victims from the wreck, but only one, a passenger sitting with his back towards the front of the plane was still alive when rescued. Despite many attempts to save his life, the victim died at the Roatan public hospital.

While Roatan does have an emergency center at a public hospital in Coxen Hole, the island lacks a trauma center and specialists capable of stabilizing a patient with vast, or complex internal damage. “We have been fooling ourselves with thinking that we can handle an accident with multiple injured where we couldn’t deal with one,” said Dainie Etches, a Canadian warden on the island who has had assisted in dozens of incidents and mishaps that involved Canadians over the years. Etches says that the construction of the new public hospital in Dixon Cove is moving forward too slowly, and the new hospital is no guarantee that government will properly staff it and equip it. “There isn’t a single orthopedist on the island right now,” said Etches.

Piloting the plane was Patrick Forseth, a 32-year-old Canadian pilot and entrepreneur who lived in Trujillo. Forseth flew multiple times that day departing Trujillo, then flying to Roatan and to Guanaja.  A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news news report quoted John Enman, a passenger who flew from Trujillo to Roatan that day, saying that Forseth told him during the flight  that “he had been delayed because of mechanical issues – a broken wire from the ignition to the battery, which a mechanic had fixed.”

Forseth picked up four American passengers who arrived from Houston and booked his plane for a flight to Guanaja. Those passengers were:Bradley Post, Robert Miller, Anthony Dubler and Frederick Tepel. The plane took off at 2:15 pm and flew a kilometer heading east.

Mary Russell, who was just a hundred meters from the crash site, reported hearing two backfires and a loud sound of the plane hitting the water. “It looked like there is a bit of smoke on takeoff. Take off looks hard and it [the plane] lifts slowly, then it looks like the engine stopped and almost at the same time the plane lost its lift on the left wing,” described the footage of the crash Patrice Bellemare, a Roatan Dive Shop owner. A video of crash was recorded by a security camera on a cruise ship in Mahogany Bay. Bellmare assisted with the removal of the plane from the crash site.

The incident is being investigated by Mario Carcamo, Chief of the Honduras Investigative Commission of Air Accidents and Incidents. It is not clear what caused the engine to quit, or what happened after that.

The proper technique after loss of engine power is to immediately tilt the airplane down in order to maintain speed and keep the airplane flying. “You are trained in a failure like this to go straight,” said Mike Boden, a 30-year Delta Airlines veteran pilotand Roatan resident. “Keep control is what you are doing.” Another person who was perplexed why an engine failure in these circumstances became such a fatal crash is Larry Forseth, Patrick’s father and veteran Air Canada pilot. “The situation was survivable” Larry Forseth had told the Canadian media. “It is clear that the plane had stalled out with the tail being broken like that,” said Boden. The plane’s chassis completely disintegrated suggesting a great vertical speed right before impact.

Several friends and family testified of that Patrick Forseth repeated training for loss of engine power in the past. “Patrick reacted quickly and got the plane away from a close-to-stall situation,” remembers Edil Mendez a 2018 emergency landing situation when the plane’s landing gear failed to open. “He was a friend, like a brother,” says Mendez who did several med-evac flights from Roatan with Patrick Forseth.

The reasons for engine failure and subsequent airplane flight are unclear. Not out of the question is passenger interference. In 2010 an accident investigation determined that a passenger interfered with the operating of the airplane during a flight near Vancouver Island when passenger interference caused the pilot to lose control of the aircraft, resulting in a crash and death of all four on board. FAA has no recommendations as far as placing passengers that are pilots next to the pilot. There are reports that two of the four passengers knew how to fly but were seated in the back of the plane. The pilot’s preference in small airplanes is to seat heavier passengers up front to better distribute the plane’s weight.

Sink boat at Tulum.

Dixon Cove Is Home To Two Most Photographs Wrecks In The Caribbean

Tulum rests in the channel entrance to Dixon Cove, the biggest tonnage harbor in Honduras, just a stone’s throw from Harris Stamp Cay, a hundred meters west of Mahogany Bay Cruise Ship Terminal, and two hundred meters from Galaxy Wave Ferry Terminal.

Tulum’s story goes back to 1979 when Roatan was a little known luscious green island.  Islander Luey McLaughlin was at work as one of the managers at Anthony’s Key Resort [AKR] when he spotted a vessel in distress. Tulum was on her way from Puerto Cortez to the Dominican Republic, she was loaded top to bottom with pine lumber and leaning heavy to her side. “The locals were jumping in, fishing out all the lumber that was floating,” says Julio Galindo, who was also an AKR manager at the time.

“I drove to Allan Hyde as he had a boat capable of towing such a big vessel,” said McLaughlin. There were no phones on the island and driving to deliver a message was the quickest way to communicate in a situation like this.

“She was leaning very heavy,” remembers Shawn Hyde who was a teenager at the time of the incident. Shawn is a son of Allan Hyde, who ended up salvaging Tulum. Capt. Denny Jones went out with one of Allan Hyde’s shrimp boats and towed Tulum to Coxen Hole harbor. There she remained for many months before being towed to French Harbour.

In the 1980s and 1990s most of the paint rusted away

Tulum’s cargo of Honduran pine lumber was unloaded in French Harbour and sold on the mainland. The money was put into an escrow account to pay for salvage and other claims. Some people say that the Tulum’s owners botched an insurance scam and that the captain just opened the wrong ballast valves.

“A bad storm was on its way and it was decided to tow Tulum to a safe harbor in Dixon Cove,” said McLaughlin. Back then Dixon Cove was a secluded place, filled with mangrove with almost no one living there. “There was nothing here, just mangroves.”  The towing operation got complicated and the boat drifted onto the reef. “The way she sunk caused no hazard as far as entrance to the harbor,” said McLaughlin. “The Honduran Naval came and discharged the bunker fuel in her tank.” Once the bunker fuel was drained the ship no longer caused a danger to the reef or waters.

A couple of years later, US Navy special forces came to see if it was worth it for them to practice salvage operations on Tulum. The early 1980s was the time of the Nicaraguan Contra war and the US military was running many covert operations out of Honduras. “The hull was already fractured and they decided against it,” said McLaughlin. Ultimately, the Navy Seals did  their training with a boat named Wendy that was floated from Coxen Hole and towed away into deep waters south of the island.

In the 1980s and 1990s most of the paint rusted away and by the early 2000s a hull was still visible and its metal crane still standing high. One could swim inside the hull like it was a gothic cathedral. The hull bent and collapsed under its own weight around 2006. “If people didn’t cut the hull up for scrap metal she would still be there,” said Shawn Hyde. A few times over the years locals boarded Tulum to salvage scrap metal for resale.

The strongest part of the ship, and the part most resistant to salt water, storms, and scavengers,  was the engine.  It remains intact, still visible to passengers entering Dixon Cove.