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Q: What is the most senior Chief Petty Officer in Key West Doing Today?
A:The U.S. Navy's new top commander in Key West got up one morning this week to a front-door taste of life in South Florida: Calmly sitting in his yard near a hedge were 15 Cuban migrants, fresh off a crossing of the Florida Straits in a rickety homemade boat. An off-duty officer, jogging in the predawn darkness, spotted the group around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday and knocked on the front door belonging to Capt. James R. Brown of the Key West Naval Air Station. 'He said, 'Hey, skipper, I need your help,' " Brown said Thursday. "I grabbed my phone and shouted to my wife, Lorie, that we had extra guests in our front yard. . . . What a sight to behold. Fifteen people were sitting calmly, sipping the little water they had left." Four of the migrants had gone for help and eventually returned to the group, sitting under a streetlight so they could be found, Brown said. Under the United States government's "wet-foot/dry-foot" policy, the Cubans -- 12 men, five women and two children -- are almost certain to be allowed to stay because they reached U.S. soil. Brown lives on military property at Truman Annex, near the big tourist buoy that marks the southernmost spot in the continental United States, only 90 miles from Cuba. Brown said he cannot discuss the security measures in place around the Navy's property, although he did say there are markers along the shore that say: "Do Not Enter. Military property." "But the Cubans land apparently just about anywhere," he said, adding that migrants have previously come ashore on military property in Key West. "Statistically, it's going to happen." The site of the Cubans' landing this week also is only about a mile from the Coast Guard base in Key West and even closer to a Virginia-based Coast Guard cutter that was docked at Truman Annex to unload $57 million of cocaine seized from a Honduras fishing vessel... Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-02-02 |
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