Workers’ money headed to families Honduran officials protecting cash

BANGOR – Thousands of dollars are sitting in an embassy building in Washington, D.C., awaiting delivery to the families of the Honduran men killed more than three weeks ago in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.

The money, as well as personal effects such as packs and wedding rings, was soaked by the same water that claimed the lives of 14 foreign workers Sept. 12, including 10 men from Honduras and four from Guatemala.

The belongings were retrieved from the van in which the men drowned, and cataloged by the State Medical Examiner’s Office before being sent home with the bodies of the Guatemalans or carried to the Embassy of Honduras in Washington.

Inside the van was evidence of how the foreign workers lived in Maine. Most of the men carried on their person all the money they had in the world, and for a few of them that was more than a couple of thousand dollars each. Along with the money were backpacks that held their clothes, and wallets and wedding rings. Driver’s licenses were found, as were a couple of Social Security cards, passports and business cards.

Before the money is sent home, the Honduran government wants to educate the families about how to protect themselves from unscrupulous individuals who may want to prey on them financially, said David Hernandez-Caballero, counselor for the Embassy of Honduras, on Thursday.

The government also is encouraging the families to set up bank accounts so that insurance money they will be getting over the next 10 years can be wired to their accounts instead of being sent by checks, which could be stolen, he said.

The amount of money the families will receive from numerous sources is much greater than the average Honduran monthly wage of $250, Hernandez-Caballero said.

Besides the money in the van, the families should be receiving the balance of the $7,000 in insurance funds not used to cover victims’ burial expenses. That amount, “more or less,” is $2,000 per victim, he said.

Plus, the families will receive lost wages of between $250 and $300 a week for 500 weeks from their employer’s workers’ compensation insurance policy.

Hernandez-Caballero said he must protect the families, and he was reluctant to disclose how much each individual family will receive from the collective sources.

“We would like to keep it confidential,” he said. “Something can happen to them for the money. I do this for the safety of the people over there. When a family over there receives $1,000 monthly, that’s a lot of money for them.”

The foreign workers were in Maine to thin trees on privately owned forest property in the Allagash, and lived more than two hours away in Caribou. On the day of the accident, the driver was hurrying to the site to make up for work time lost the day before because of rain, according to the account of the sole survivor.

The 14 men died when the van in which they were riding blew a tire just before John’s Bridge, fishtailed and flipped into 15 feet of water.

The lone survivor got out through a back window. The others drowned. Speed in excess of 60 mph in an unmarked 45 mph zone on the logging road was to blame, according to state officials.

A toxicology report on the van’s driver, Juan Turcios-Matomoros, showed no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system, said James Ferland, administrator of the State Medical Examiner’s Office, on Thursday.

Ferland said all of the belongings found in the crumpled van, including the money, were matched with each of the victims.

“All of the money we received here was identified to a specific person,” he said.

Hernandez-Caballero said most of the men’s personal belongings were sent home with their bodies, but he did not want to send the money found in the van because he feared it would get lost or stolen. He said he has received reports that some people in Honduras are reading news reports for clues as to who will be receiving money, and how much.

A representative from the Embassy of Honduras will be delivering the money on an undisclosed date, Hernandez-Caballero said.