This just in about the victims and the families of people who were killed in a boating accident one year ago on Columbus Day. Every year in the waters off of Miami there is a Columbus Day Regatta. It is a fun event and a beautiful sight. The Regatta takes place on Sunday and Monday of the weekend. It is a beautiful sight to see all of the sail boats in a precosseion as they race down to Elliot Key. They then spend the night there and race back the next day. The Regatta is for sailboats but there are also motor boats who join the festivities especially the partying. At Elliot Key, on the night of the race, there is always a party and it can get wild. As you can imagine there is sometimes some drinking and driving of motorboats.

When accidents do occur on the water with any kind of motorboats, yachts, Jet Skiis, Wave Runners, Seadoos, sailboats, commercial vessels including tankers, freighters, cruise ships, and any other vessel or boat, maritime law applies. This is a specialized area of the law. For this type of case, you need a maritime lawyer who handles personal injuries.

Last year, on the Columbus Day weekend, there was an accident where a rental boat broke down, was being towed, and was hit by another boat. This caused the wrongful deaths of two of the boaters and many personal injuries. Some of those who suffered personal injuries were students at Florida International University (FIU). Here are some more details from the FIU student newspaper:

One year after the boat accident during the Columbus Day Regatta that killed two FIU students and injured many others, some of the survivors - together with friends and relatives -returned to the regatta site, but this time with a different purpose.

Need help? Just light the way is the name of the campaign they founded to create awareness about the dangers of the ocean, which they believe will help prevent more accidents such as the one that killed students Monica Burgera and James Noel Pou last year.

“We couldn’t let this happen again, so we though that by telling other people what happened to us and informing them about boat safety was the best way to prevent it,” said Andres Perez, who survived the accident that took the life of his girlfriend for more than four years, Burguera; and his roommate, Noel Pou.

The accident took place when their broken-down rental boat, which was being towed back to shore, was hit from behind by a 35-foot powerboat.

Together with Burguera’s family and about 100 volunteers, Perez spent last weekend’s regatta distributing flyers, t-shirts, hats and flashlights at 14 different marinas throughout Miami.

“We went through such a hard time that we don’t want anyone else to go through the same. Saving one life will make the effort worth it,” said Mayra Burguera, the mother of Monica Burguera.

Need Help? was financed by the Burguera family and supported by friends and relatives.
A Web site and a Facebook.com group helped spread the word about it and quickly found solidarity among the FIU community. The Facebook group reached over 1,000 members in just three days.

Also as part of the campaign, the Burguera family decorated a boat with Burguera’s and Noel Pou’s picture and approached regatta boaters to hand them safety information and remind them of the dangers of the ocean.