Accidents & Disasters

On December 2, 2020, H.E. Remus Li-Kuo Chen, Ambassador of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to Belize, presented a grant in the sum of US$100,000 to assist Belize in the repair of flood damage caused by the passage of Hurricanes Eta and Iota. The donation was received by Hon. Christopher Coye, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment.

On Tuesday, November 24th the sailboat belonging to Travis Gates was found "on anchor" at the north tip of Cabo Tres Puntas, Guatemala, with nobody on board. Both Gates and the sailboat's dinghy were missing and after days of exhaustive searching Gates has yet to be found.

On Thursday, November 19th, 2020, the Prime Minister Hon. John Briceno, and Hon. Jose Abelardo Mai, Minister of Agriculture, Food Security and Enterprise, visited Maypen Village in the Belize District to get a firsthand look at the situation involving cattle rescue due to flooding. 

As Belize continues to experience heavy rains due to the passing of Tropical Depression Eta, many residents have been experiencing flooding. It is anticipated that due to the flooding in some areas, drinking water sources may have become contaminated leaving it unsafe to drink and requiring treatment.

A fire on the ground floor of a three-story wooden building was quickly contained by the San Pedro Fire Department (SPFD) on Friday, October 16th in the San Juan Area. No one was injured in the blaze, but everything inside the apartment was destroyed. The Officer in Charge at SPFD, Gladstone Bucknor, stated that they responded to the fire at 11:35AM, and extinguished the blaze ten minutes after. He said that because the building has three floors and the fire was on the ground level, there was a risk the building could collapse. Another concern was the risk of fire spreading to other homes nearby, causing a major inferno.

The foreign military vessel apparently experienced mechanical failure as they were exiting a channel to the open sea while bound north to Mexico. They did not run aground on the reef as rumored.

As a part of BEL’s Hurricane Preparedness Plan, we are monitoring the weather and taking all necessary measures to maintain continuous, safe and reliable service to customers, where possible. The Company is mobilizing its people, resources and equipment to ensure that we are prepared to assess and recover from any impacts of the approaching storm.

The UNDP programme, “Enabling Gender-Responsive Disaster Recovery, Climate and Environmental Resilience in the Caribbean” (EnGenDER) has been working with implementing partners, stakeholders and donors over the last year to strengthen disaster risk management systems for 9 Caribbean countries and build resilience to the effects of climate change. This work is happening at a variety of levels, from improving central government’s ability build strategies for inclusive approaches to policy making to build resilience; to strengthening regional systems for planning and recovery from natural disasters; to community level interventions to ensure the vulnerable have what they need to so that that adaptation and mitigation actions in key livelihood sectors, such as agriculture, consider vulnerable persons.