Published September 22, 2000, in theMiami Herald
Crash survivors can stay in the U.S.
Injured Cubans haunted by flight
By Marika Lynch, Sandra Marquez Garcia And Eunice Ponce.
mynch@herald.com
Moments after his release from a Key West hospital, 6-year-old plane crash
survivor Andy Fuentes was sitting on his uncle's lap, steering the family Toyota
Corolla and gabbing on the cellphone with his grandmother.
"Abuela, you know what happened?'' Andy said to his grandmother in
Miami during the 3:30 a.m. Thursday call. "The plane fell down. My dad
broke his head. My mom has a tremendooouus cut on her leg.
"Nothing happened to me!'' he assured her.
The little boy is one of nine Cubans who survived the crash of a crop-duster
they used to flee the island -- all of the survivors will be able to stay in the
United States, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said Thursday.
Six migrants who arrived in Key West aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter late
Wednesday -- pilot Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernández, wife Mercedes Martínez
Paredes, their sons David, 7, and Erick Iglesias, 13, and Pabel Puig Blanco and
Jacqueline Viera -- were taken to the Krome detention center and released
Thursday afternoon.
Andy was released into the custody of his aunt Sandra Ponzoa. His parents,
Rodolfo Fuentes and Liliana Ponzoa, remained at the Lower Keys Medical Center,
he with a sprained neck, she with a leg cut that needed to be treated with
antibiotics.
FIRST DAY IN U.S.
The first-grader spent his first full day in the United States at the Key
West Kmart buying green socks and a pair of shoes that blinked red when he
walked. A Burger King lunch was brought to the hospital. Andy put one of the
restaurant's trademark crowns on his mom's head, making her the "Burger
Queen,'' then ditched his meal to play with new toys: a baseball bat, glove,
ball and hat.
Memories of the voyage still haunt the group, though. Over lunch at the
hospital, mom Liliana told The Herald that right after the crash -- as the plane
settled in the water -- Andy looked up and saw how badly his parents were
injured. He began to vomit, she said.
When asked how she felt when she woke up Thursday morning, she said:
"I felt that now I am free. But I still felt fear. Fear for what we had
been through. That is something that we will never forget.''
HORRIFYING NEWS
In Miami Thursday, Isidro Puig, whose two sons were on the flight, awaited
the survivors' release with tears in his eyes. Only one of his sons, Pabel Puig,
27, made it through the voyage. His younger son Judel, 23, drowned after the
crash. He didn't know how to swim, relatives say.
Isidro Puig didn't know one of his sons had died until the Coast Guard
cutter arrived in Key West late Wednesday. As Pabel got out of the ambulance,
Isidro yelled frantically, "Judel? Judel? Judel?''
The father, who didn't know about the trip beforehand, rushed inside the
emergency room, where hospital staff relayed the news.
Pabel Puig, Isidro said, is still overwhelmed by the loss of his brother.
"All he does is cry,'' said the elder Puig. "He can't talk.''
After the plane hit the water, Pabel looked to find his younger brother and
saw his lifeless body floating, Isidro said. Fuentes family attorney Manny Diaz
said Judel had tried to prop himself up with the plane's wing, but couldn't stay
afloat as the plane sank.
His body was taken to the Monroe County Medical Examiner's Office.
According to accounts by relatives, the group, most of them neighbors in
Havana, decided to flee to the United States in a crop-duster flown by Iglesias.
Iglesias has piloted the Russian-made Antonov AN-2 biplanes for 12 years. The
group took off from Pinar del Rio, headed to South Florida, but soon got lost.
Iglesias radioed Havana two or three times, asking for coordinates to Miami,
said Rafael Fuentes, Rodolfo Fuentes' brother who arrived from Cuba five years
ago.
The Cuban control tower never answered, he said.
"They just got lost, and after three hours over the sea they realized
they were out of fuel so they started looking for a boat,'' Rafael Fuentes said.
That's when they spotted the Panamanian freighter, the Chios Dream. Knowing
they were about to crash-land, the pilot began to circle the freighter to draw
attention. Meanwhile, the kids and women were told to get in the back of the
plane and put their heads between their legs. The children put on life
preservers, Rafael Fuentes said.
After Iglesias ditched the plane in the ocean, it rolled twice, survivors
told family members. All were alive when the craft landed.
Despite his injuries, Rodolfo Fuentes, a trained flight engineer, propped up
Mercedes Martínez Paredes, who didn't know how to swim. Rodolfo is
strong, his brother Rafael said, because he practices tae kwon do.
The freighter's crew then hoisted them aboard their ship.
After 36 hours at sea aboard the freighter and the cutter, the group arrived
in the United States. To keep their spirits up on the voyage to Key West, pilot
Iglesias cracked jokes. It was a good thing Liliana Ponzoa was so injured, he
joked on board, because otherwise she'd be flirting with the Coast Guard doctor.
Liliana lit up, then touched her face as she remembered the story Thursday.
"It hurts to smile,'' she said.
Amid policy debate, doctor acted quickly to treat survivors
By Paul Brinkley-Rogers. pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com
While high-level officials in Washington debated the fate of eight survivors
from a Cuban plane that ditched into the sea, a 30-year-old Navy lieutenant made
a command decision -- bring them ashore.
The crash of the Russian-made biplane severely injured a ninth person and
drowned a 10th, and Dr. Michael Clark -- a man very much aware of his
compassionate calling -- ruled that all eight of the bruised and cut survivors
needed to be X-rayed to diagnose any internal injuries.
"The Coast Guard said American policy is wet foot, dry land,'' Clark
said, referring to the U.S. practice of allowing only Cubans who touch land to
stay. "But their policy doesn't really affect my policy.
"These people were in a plane crash,'' said the Macon, Ga., native,
who spent 45 minutes on Wednesday tending to the survivors aboard the
Panama-flagged freighter that rescued them midday Tuesday 285 miles southwest of
Key West in the Yucatan Channel.
"I'd check one person and I'd say this person was injured and looks
fine, but what really was the injury? . . . And then, I guess, the human factor
took over.'' He told himself, "These people should be in a hospital. They
[Washington] make the policy, then they can work it out.''
Hour after hour on Wednesday, the Lower Florida Keys Medical Center and the
U.S. Coast Guard waited for Washington officials to resolve the issue of whether
the survivors would be allowed to stay.
Meanwhile, at 1:30 p.m., Clark -- a flight surgeon at Boca Chica Naval Air
Station -- was being winched down to the deck of the MV Chios Dream from a Coast
Guard Dauphine helicopter. He had his medical kit, including an old-fashioned
stethoscope, in his hand.
The freighter's mix of Latino and Greek crew members helped him out of the
hoist basket. Clark, who had once been stationed at Souda Bay naval base on the
Greek island of Crete, was able to ask in Greek if the food he smelled in the
air really was a mix of fish and feta cheese.
It was. But he was much too busy to eat.
ON TO WORK
He found the two women survivors and their three children in a stateroom
normally used by crew members and went to work. He checked for infections. He
pressed on bruises to test for pain.
"The kids were all fine,'' he said. "They had some minor abrasions
-- little stuff on their tummies. But they were playing.''
Liliana Ponzoa, 36, had a deep cut almost to the bone on her lower left leg.
There was a Kerlix wrap -- a kind of spongelike gauze -- around the injury,
placed there the day before by Dr. Myron Binns, the Jamaican-born physician
aboard the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Tropicale that had stopped to render aid.
Clark said Ponzoa also had cuts and bruises below her left eye near the
cheekbone.
Mercedes Martínez Paredes, wife of the plane's pilot, Angel Lenin
Iglesias Hernández, had suffered a bruise below her right breast and
above the rib that could have indicated a rib fracture.
On another level of the ship was the pilot, another man and a woman.
Clark said the pilot's left arm appeared to have been dislocated. He had no
way of telling for sure without X-rays. "The pilot was in a lot of pain.''
He had a cut above the left eye and bruises on his face.
"He was at the controls,'' Clark said. "There was apparently only
one seat on the plane.'' When the crop-duster plane hit the water at 70 or 80
knots after circling the freighter, Clark said, the pilot was smashed against
the control panel. Everyone else was thrown around inside the plane.
Pabel Puig Blanco, 27, whose half-brother, Judel Puig Martinez, 23, drowned
in the ditching, had a 5-by-2 1/2-inch bruise on his back below the 12th rib,
indicating possible internal injuries.
The woman, teacher Jacqueline Viera, had a collarbone injury, Clark said.
"On her right side there was a good amount of swelling and bruising in
the area of the clavicle. I felt around the clavicle and thought it was possible
she had a mid-shaft fracture.'' He said she was given Naprosyn, an ibuprofen
drug, for the pain by Coast Guard corpsman David Villareal, who earlier had
called Key West to suggest sending a doctor.
Clark radioed the Coast Guard.
He said he was aware of "the worst-case scenario for these people'':
deportation.
'NEEDED ATTENTION'
"The policy was in the back of my mind,'' he said. "But from my
perspective, they needed medical attention.
The Chios Dream was only two hours from Key West. It was not worth the risk,
he said, to winch the survivors from a ship being buffeted by high seas and a
strong wind to a chopper.
"My recommendation was to wait'' until the Chios Dream was close to
shore, he said, where the Cubans could be placed on small boats and taken to
ambulances.
They were X-rayed. As it turned out, they had not suffered internal
injuries. The ninth survivor, Rodolfo Fuentes, remains at a Key West hospital
and his condition is improving. He had been airlifted from the freighter the day
before Clark's arrival.
"I felt I did the right thing,'' Clark said. "This is what we work
for,'' he said of physicians. "This is what I trained for. This is what
that was all about.''
The interviews by immigration officials that could have sent the survivors
back to Cuba would have to wait.
Lt. Cdr. DeAnn Farr, a doctor at the group medical center at Boca Chica,
summed up what happened on the freighter.
"The corpsman could see right away that [the survivors] needed a
doctor's care. While the bureaucrats were arguing about this, Michael did his
job.''
Cuba calls migrants' flight 'piracy,' partially blames U.S.
zHerald Staff Report
Cuba on Thursday slammed as "piracy'' the commandeering of a
crop-duster with 10 Cubans aboard that crashed into the ocean in an ill-fated
flight to Florida.
Havana also indirectly blamed the United States for Tuesday's daredevil
departure from Cuba, saying criminals are encouraged to take risky trips because
the U.S. has failed to punish people who have engaged in similar stunts.
"The absence of any sanctions against those who hijack planes and boats
constitutes one of the strongest stimulants to illegal immigration,'' declared
an editorial in the communist daily Granma.
Cuba has for months complained that the U.S. government sends contradictory
messages to people who would try to migrate to the United States illegally. On
the one hand, it turns back those intercepted at sea, but on the other, it
rewards those who elude detection and make it to dry land with residency under
the Cuban Adjustment Act.
Diplomats from Havana and Washington, however, met in New York Thursday in a
one-day renewal of their on-again, off-again migration talks aimed at
maintaining an orderly, legal flow of Cuban immigrants to the United States. In
those talks, the United States expressed to Cuba its displeasure over the
restrictions the Havana government imposes on Cubans who wish to leave the
island legally.
"We told them very clearly that we're concerned about the barriers the
Cuban government has raised to keep its citizens from emigrating. Right now,
there are more restrictions on departure from Cuba than 12 months ago,'' said
the chief of the American delegation, William Brownfield, a State Department
official.
That's why "we're glad that every 20,000 Cubans who manage to come to
the United States [legally] every year are people who don't risk their lives at
sea.'' The meeting, which was scheduled to last two days, lasted merely six
hours. Sources said the talks touched on Tuesday's crash, but gave no specifics.
Cuba had stayed away from the talks since January -- in protest over the tug
of war over Elián González, the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor
whose mother perished in a perilous Thanksgiving crossing last year.
Cuba demanded the boy's return and at times -- before federal agents
forcibly removed the child from his relatives' Little Havana home on April 22 --
accused the Clinton administration of being cowed by Miami's Cuban exile
community.
In this week's episode, Cuban air controllers originally notified the United
States that a plane had been hijacked, according to a radio message sent to
Havana Air Traffic Control either by the pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernández,
or another man on board, Rodolfo Fuentes.
Friday, Granma said in an official government notice that rather than a
hijacking, "it was an act of piracy to commandeer an airplane destined to
fumigate and fertilize fields of rice, a basic food of our people.''
It added: "The diversion toward Florida caused the death of one
citizen, grave and perhaps irreversible injuries to another, and put in mortal
danger three women and three innocent children -- 6, 7 and 13 years old.''
Granma also remarked that the pilot, who was named for the Russian Communist
leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, did not have a criminal record and had a
history as a good worker. Instead, it blamed the "harmful influence'' of
Fuentes, who was seriously injured in the crash and airlifted to Key West on
Tuesday.
Herald wire services contributed to this report.
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