Coron not ready for tourists, lacks emergency health facilities – family of tourist in fatal tour

The family of a 25-year-old student who died following an island tour in Coron, Palawan is prepared to file a case against the province’s tourism authorities should the autopsy reveal that he died of poisoning and not drowning.

This is according to Arlene Latorre, mother of Miguel Ruiz, who was pronounced dead on arrival at the Coron District Hospital Friday last week.

“I’m just waiting for the results of the autopsy,” she told InterAksyon.com in an interview Tuesday at Arlington Memorial Chapels in Quezon City, where her son’s remains lie.

“If it happens that it’s positive for poisoning, we have a case. Because the place has no facilities. It is a tourist destination but there are no facilities. There was no embalmer. The doctor was acting like Satan, because wala (nothing), he did not do anything. Sabi lang daw, ‘Sige, resuscitate niyo kung gusto niyo.’ Ha? Doktor ba ‘to (He supposedly just said, ‘Go, resuscitate if you want to.’ Huh? Is this really a doctor)?”

Latorre said she would consult her lawyer about the specifics of the case, but noted that they would sue primarily because of the lack of facilities in the tourist destination.

The Philippines News Agency initially quoted the Coron Municipal Police Office as saying Ruiz had drowned, but Ruiz’s boyfriend and companion on the trip refuted this, saying the water was shallow and Ruiz was wearing a life jacket while swimming.

Trouble breathing

Travis Millard, 24, a Filipino-American who was visiting Ruiz in the Philippines, said they were part of an island tour along with three other tourists that day. With them were four boatmen who also served as their tour guides.

The trip was part of a package offered by their hotel, Millard said.

By afternoon, the tourists had reached their last stop after snorkeling at each destination.

Millard said he could see the “roots” from the bottom of the sea at Siete Pecados islands, which looked drained of water, and asked if it was low tide.

A boatman replied in the affirmative but gave no warning although he and his companions had been navigating through the water cautiously, as opposed to going full speed ahead like in the first part of the trip, Millard said.

The tourists then got off the boat wearing life jackets and began to swim.

As he was making his way back to the boat, Millard heard Ruiz call out to him, “Travis!”

“And the way his breath sounded as he called me was sort of like short and exhausted. And he was like, ‘I stepped on something and I’m having trouble breathing!’” Millard recounted.

He swam towards Ruiz and saw the latter struggling with his life jacket. Millard helped Ruiz with it and began rubbing Ruiz’s back, telling him to take slow breaths and relax. Ruiz made no other complaints aside from his breathing, Millard said.

“It sounded like very labored breathing,” he added. This was when he called a boatman for help, with the latter swimming quickly to the pair.

Millard said the boatman chalked up the incident to the day’s snorkeling activities and instructed the pair to sit on the corals where they could relax.

Millard said he had his doubts due to the spikes of the corals and the damage sitting might do on these, but the two followed the instructions.

Ruiz’s breathing became more labored, and the boatman advised him to lie flat on the water, although Ruiz resisted the position. His breathing got worse and he began to exhale “bubbly liquid” through his mouth and nose, Millard said. This was when the boatman whistled to his companions and called out to them, “Double time, double time!”

Millard said they helped Ruiz to the boat, with the latter able to climb on a ladder and into the boat. The color of his face had changed, he had become quieter, and his breaths grew more distant from one another.

Boat ride to shore

The last words Ruiz spoke to Millard were: “I’m about to pass out.” Millard said Ruiz collapsed, and they lay him on a bench of the boat as the boatmen began to drive to shore. At this point, Millard began giving Ruiz mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Ruiz vomited during the process, but Millard continued to give oxygen.

“‘Cause in my head he’s just having trouble breathing. As soon as we get to the shore, it’s 2015, we have technology. They’re gonna hook him up to a respirator and he’ll be fine. He’s 25, he’s healthy, this is just a freak incident,” Millard remembered thinking.

Furious and scared because no one else was lending a hand, Millard screamed at his companions to help him. They finally assisted him, checking Ruiz’s pulse and letting Millard know that there was a heartbeat as he continued doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

As a clinician, Millard said he knew that any situation of anaphylaxis (acute allergic reaction), time was of the essence. Air needed to pass through the patient’s body.

“I even thought to myself, should I give him an emergency tracheotomy? Should I stab him (in the throat)? The thoughts in my head were just going so quickly,” Millard said.

He was further incensed when the boatmen asked if anyone had a mobile phone and he had to stop giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to hand them his phone so they could call the police.

He also lamented that the boatmen seemed more concerned with the state of their boat, which had hit corals in their haste to get to shore, than with Ruiz’s condition.

An ambulance was waiting when they arrived at the shore, but they had to use a plank “maybe the width of my hand” to transport Ruiz from the boat into the vehicle, Millard said.

“It looked like a circus act. His head was hanging back, two very small people were trying to lift this large person, and we were all trying to walk on this maybe six-inch… It was like they didn’t even have the proper transport to move somebody from the boat,” Millard said.

‘The taxi of his death’

Things did not improve after that. According to Millard, no one in the ambulance administered first aid to Ruiz.

“The ambulance was the taxi of his death. They did not give him any kind of assistance. I was the one who continued to give him air. I was the one to continue giving him what CPR I could recall from Health class I learned when I was 12 years old,” Millard said.

The ambulance driver, a boatman, and another person were with the two in the vehicle on the way to the hospital, he added.

“The craziest, most unfortunate part was when we arrived at the hospital, the ambulance door jammed. We couldn’t open the door. I almost broke the glass,” Millard said.

They had to carry Ruiz out of the ambulance through the car doors in front, “balancing him and contorting his body” not on a stretcher, but on a cushion, through the seats, Millard said.

“I couldn’t believe it. It was meant for the movies, honestly,” he said.

Ruiz was then transferred to an emergency room.

“They put him in there and with no sense of urgency, no speed in their movements, they laid him down, closed the doors, and then I just sat on the floor, sobbing. Maybe 45 seconds later the doctor came out and he was like, ‘So what happened?’ And I was like, ‘He stepped on something. He’s okay, right, he’s okay?’ He was like, ‘He’s gone,’” Millard recalled.

He refused to believe the doctor and urged the latter to revive Ruiz.

“And he gave me this look and he pointed me to the room. He didn’t say it in these words but he was like, ‘Go ahead. Go for it.’ So I opened the door and I saw him there and I began to pound on his chest, I began to blow into his mouth, and the moment I touched his lips and they were cold, I knew that he had left me,” Millard said.

He added that the doctor gestured to Ruiz’s nails, pupils, and artery to demonstrate that the Ruiz was indeed dead, and had been for several minutes.

“He had no sympathy in the delivery of what I had just experienced. He couldn’t even offer me any kind of, ‘Thanks for trying.’ Nothing. He was just like, “That’s it, he’s gone. Who do you want me to call?’” Millard said.

‘There was no drowning’

Millard questioned the statement of Coron Municipal Police Office chief Police Senior Inspector Emilio Parangue which attributed Ruiz’s death to drowning, although Parangue did say that an investigation into the incident was still ongoing.

The information from the police suggested that they were trying to hide what really occurred, Millard added.

“I want to make it clear: He did not drown. There was no drowning. This was a case of some ill-prepared tour, lack of preparation,” he said.

“If there are such things that exist that are toxic, they need to have an EpiPen, an epinephrine delivery, something that could have saved his life. At least one person on that boat should have been trained to do CPR, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. There should have been at least a transportation ramp that made the transfer of his body from the boat to the shore easier than this stick that could have broke. And it was just, it was all wrong,” Millard said listing the things that a tourist destination must have for such incidents.

He also blamed the tourism authorities for the incident, saying if they were going to invite tourists to Coron, they needed to protect their visitors too.

“At least give somebody a fair warning,” Millard said.

He said that when he and Ruiz were waiting for the other passengers to arrive on the boat at the beginning of the tour, one of the boatmen saw a jellyfish and picked it up, saying that it could kill a person with a sting. This was done in a comical manner, however, and the warning was not repeated for the other passengers who arrived later, Millard said.

The boatman even joked that he would slap one of his companions in the face with the tentacles, Millard added.

Findings in two weeks

Because Coron had no facilities where an autopsy could be performed, a death certificate had not been issued for Ruiz.

According to Latorre, an autopsy was done as soon as her son’s body arrived on a chartered flight to Manila on Saturday by the Philippine National Police Crime Laboratory.

The findings would be out in two weeks, she said.

“In a matter of ten minutes I really lost the best person in my life and he died in my actual arms. And that is one thing I can never forget. I would never want this to happen to anybody else, ever,” Millard said.

Source: www.interaksyon.com