Ex-woodsman feared daily drive Honduran man quit forestry job after similar accident in July

CARIBOU – A Honduran man says he quit his job with the company that employed 14 migrant workers who died in a van crash after he was injured in a similar accident in early July.

The Sept. 12 accident has raised questions about the safety of Central American logging workers who some days spend six hours traveling over private roads in remote forest areas to get to and from work.

Hugo Bonilla said Saturday he was driving home from a brush-cutting job for Evergreen Forestry Services when his 1989 Subaru station wagon hit a rut in Beaver Brook Road. The car plunged off a small bridge with no guardrail and flipped three times before coming to rest, he said.

Bonilla, 41, injured his shoulder. Two passengers, Dionisio Funez-Diaz and Sebastian Garcia-Garcia, were unhurt, Bonilla said. Both passengers died two months later in the van crash along the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

Bonilla spoke after a memorial service for the 10 Hondurans and four Guatemalans killed when their van crashed off John’s Bridge, which also had no guardrail. His cousin Carlos Izaguirre was one of the victims. Officials said excessive speed was to blame for the accident.

Peter Smith, president of Idaho-based Evergreen Forestry Services, attended Saturday’s service but deferred questions to a spokesman, Andrew Ketterer. A call to Ketterer’s office seeking comment on Bonilla’s accident went unanswered.

Bonilla said the station wagon was totaled in the July crash. A white station wagon with a crushed roof and windshield was found in the location Bonilla described, at an auto-repair lot in the nearby town of New Sweden.

Bonilla, who married a Caribou woman in 1997 and is now a permanent U.S. resident, said he did not blame Evergreen for this month’s fatal crash. But he did say that safety concerns were one reason he quit working for Evergreen at his wife’s behest.

Bonilla’s wife, Connie, said she called Evergreen’s project manager, Keith Hanson, after the July accident.

“I said Hugo will not be able to go back to work due to the accident,” she recalled Saturday.

Bonilla has not received any money from Evergreen since the crash, his wife said. She added that his medical bills were paid under a personal liability insurance policy.

Bonilla, who now has a lower-paying job with Maine Bag Co., said he interpreted the July accident as a sign from God to quit working in the logging industry. He said he believes if he hadn’t quit, he would have been in the van that crashed Sept. 12.

AP PHOTO BY MICHAEL C. YORK

Hugo Bonilla quit his brush-cutting job after he injured his shoulder in a similar accident in July while driving his 1989 Subaru station wagon. Two of his passengers in the July crash were victims in the Sept. 12 van accident along the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.