At least eight people have died in the shipwreck of two fishing boats carrying immigrants on board in the waters of the city of San Diego (California, USA), as reported this Sunday by the local Fire and Rescue Department.
Rescue teams received notification of the incident late Saturday night, when a Spanish-speaking woman called on the phone. She recounted that there had been a collision between the two boats and that those traveling in hers, which was carrying eight people, had managed to reach land, but the other, which had between eight and ten people on board, had been shipwrecked.
The emergency services used the coordinates of the mobile from which the call had been made to determine that it was the area of Black’s Beach, on the outskirts of San Diego. Upon arriving there they found two wrecked fishing boats. A broader search allowed them to locate eight bodies. Some, washed up on the beach by the sea, in an area of about 400 meters in length. Others, in the water in shallow areas.
The rescue efforts, in which Customs officers, lifeguards, coast guards and firefighters participated, were complicated by high tide and dense fog, San Diego Lifeguard Chief Lt. James Gartland said in a statement. a news conference. Although helicopters from the Coast Guard Corps were mobilized, the aircraft had to return to the base due to poor visibility. None of the participants in the operation were able to see any survivors. The search for other possible victims continued Sunday morning.
The bodies have been made available to the county coroner to try to proceed with their identification. So far their names and nationalities are unknown.
According to the commander of the Coast Guard Corps in the San Diego sector, Captain James Spitler, since 2017 a 771% increase in human trafficking has been detected on the southern coast of US California. In the last two years that activity has caused the death of at least 23 people at sea.
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