‘We were screaming and screaming.' Witnesses watch as barge hits sailboat of campers

Miami Herald

4 days ago

William Cruz foresaw the Biscayne Bay boat crash that killed two young girls and critically injured two others moments before it happened.
He was sitting atop a roof of a Hibiscus Island home fronting the bay when he saw a large barge barreling toward a small sailboat with brightly colored sails that was not moving in the windless Monday morning on the bay.
'Look! Look!' Cruz, 40, shouted suddenly to his two fellow roofers, all sitting on the roof while taking a break from the heat.
The three roofers jumped to their feet and began yelling at the boats, cupping their hands around their mouths to call out as far as they could.
The roofers could tell the 60-foot barge would collide with the 17-foot Hobie Getaway in less than a minute. They spied a man in a neon green work shirt on the side of the barge, halfway down where a crane was positioned. Maybe, if the worker in the reflective shirt saw them or the children, the barge could still swerve or stop in time.
'We were screaming and screaming, but we were just too far — he wasn't going to hear us,' Cruz told the Herald Tuesday. 'They were headed straight for the children and by the time the man realized, the barge was already right on top of them.'
READ MORE: Two girls dead, two others critical after barge hits sailboat in Biscayne Bay: Coast Guard
Another of the roofers, Aldo Meglar, watched in horror as the impending tragedy unfolded moment by moment. Melgar, who was back working for T&S Roofing Systems on the same roof Tuesday, estimates that roughly 30 seconds after he and his colleagues began shouting and jumping, the barge crewman in the neon green shirt also spotted the sailboat full of campers from the Miami Yacht Club.
The roofers said they heard the children and counselor yelling and waving for the barge to stop.
'He saw the small boat and he started running to the back of the barge yelling at the captain,' Meglar said. 'But the barge was already this close to the children in front,' he added, gesturing to a garden bench about 20 feet away. 'I think the captain heard him, because the engine was cut off, and the boat stopped very quickly, but it was too late,' Meglar said, shaking his head.
'It sounded like thunder, the moment the barge hit the little boat. I started screaming 'It's killed them! It's killed them!''
Meglar and Cruz watched as the barge struck the sailboat's side, flipping it and throwing the campers and counselor overboard.
As the sailboat was dragged under the barge, the roofers think they saw some of the campers get pulled under.
'I felt awful seeing that, scared, and it was all the worse because we were yelling and they couldn't hear us,' Melgar said.
The crash killed two of the campers - a 7-year-old girl and a 13-year-old girl - and critically injured two other girls, ages 8 and 11. Another camper, a 12-year-old girl, and the 19-year-old camp counselor were rescued.
The Coast Guard, which is leading the investigation, has not publicly identified the victims. The Argentine consulate in Miami confirmed to the Herald the death of 7-year-old Mila Yankelevich, the grandaughter of Cris Morena and Gustavo Yankelevich, two prominent Argentine media producers.
READ MORE: Granddaughter of renowned Argentine TV producers dies in Miami boat crash
The roofers were among many along the shoreline of Hibiscus Island who witnessed the tragedy unfold shortly after 11 a.m.
Andry Becerra, 38, who works for Chamonix Yachts, had just arrived to a client's house on North Hibiscus Drive when emergency vehicles began screeching onto the street and skidding to a stop at a house three doors down.
Becerra and his co-workers, there to detail a yacht, were walking to the dock in the back of the house just yards from what rapidly became the scene of a rescue operation.
'There was such desperation, all the rescuers were so desperate,' Becerra said, describing how rescue boats sped toward the site and workers in life jackets and dive gear leapt into the water. 'They moved so fast, without doubt or pause. I tell you - there were true heroes among them.'
As helicopters whirred overhead and more boats flooded into the bay, Becerra was transfixed as a swimmer in red shorts lifted a young girl above the water. The child was pulled onto a boat that raced back toward the shore near where Becerra was sitting. Almost simultaneously, he said, divers and rescue workers lifted a second girl into another boat.
'They seemed so focused, even though there was so much noise from the boats and cars and all the yelling,' Becerra said. 'They were very, very valiant, and they moved with great urgency to get the children to shore.'
The children were sped to the shoreline behind 131 North Hibiscus Drive and then rushed through the property. Across the street, Melissa Friedland, 48, watched what happened next.
The roar of vehicles on Friedland's usually quiet street on Hibiscus Island sent her darting to the large window of her second-floor bedroom that overlooked her neighbor's driveway. In minutes, it became the rescue operation's central staging area.
'At first, I was worried my neighbor was hurt,' Friedland said. 'Then I saw them bring out a gurney with a child, a girl, on it — and my stomach dropped.'
Friedland initially thought the girl on the gurney might be her neighbor's granddaughter, but the escalating size and scope of the operation made her realize this was much bigger than one child.
'The Miami search and rescue workers were so, so amazing, there were so many people sprinting — really sprinting — back and forth for equipment from trucks and through the house.'
Friedland watched, petrified, as five gurneys carrying children were run out through her neighbor's property into a waiting ambulances.
There were five young Miami Yacht Club campers on the boat - between ages of 7 and 13 — and the 19-year-old camp counselor. The club, nearly a century old and tucked behind Parrot Jungle on Watson Island, has taught generations of children how to sail.
'Not some boujee yacht club.' Miami Yacht Club has mission of teaching kids to sail
Friedland texted her daughter first. Then she texted her neighbors, some of whom had enrolled their children in past years in sailing summer camp programs. One thought dominated Friedland's thoughts.
'How awful, how horrible — those parents' lives are never going to be the same.''