Hawkins said that when they saw the boat they waved it down to catch the boaters’ attention. They were all “crying” and “celebrating.”
“We had been through so much of an ordeal we were already celebrating before we got on his boat.”
After the rescue, Hall went to a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, but left after he waited too long in the emergency room, his mother told CNN. He returned to his home in Palacio, Texas, to rest and will see a doctor later on Sunday for what he thinks are second-degree burns on his legs from sun exposure, she said.
Phillips was on his way home to reunite with his family, his wife, Shane, told CNN. He did not seek medical attention, she said.
Hawkins suffered open sores on his legs after floating in the water for eight days. He plans to head to Fort Worth, Texas, to reunite with his family, he said.
There were yells and screams and attempts to stop the flooding, but it was too late. The boat capsized. They jumped ship, wondering how it all happened so quickly.
“We’re just trying to get each other calm and try to get as much stuff as we could because we knew automatically it was going to be a survival test,” he said.
The men were missing at sea since August 22.
The Coast Guard had searched a week for three men before calling off the search Friday after it said it had looked more than 86,000 square miles.
A day after the Coast Guard ended its search, the crew of a private vessel found the three sitting on top of their capsized 23-foot fishing vessel about 180 miles from Port Aransas, Texas, the Coast Guard said in a news release.
Rescued after spending eight days lost at sea, Tressel Hawkins was happy to be back in Texas.
“Actually, it feels great to be on solid ground,” he told CNN on Sunday.
Hawkins, 43, and his fellow boaters, Curtis Hall, 28, and James Phillips, 30, set out to catch swordfish and marlin when they set sail about 100 miles south of Matagorda Bay in Texas. But one night early on during their trip in the Gulf of Mexico, Hawkins was jolted by a “rude awakening.”
The bean bag Hawkins was sleeping on started to float beneath him, he said. There was a water extractor malfunction, causing so much water to get into the boat that the water was knee high, he said.
“There are thousands of children in Dongchuan district and other areas, so I wonder why only the kids around the industrial park have been found to have excessive lead in their blood,” said a local mother, who asked not to be named. “Who will take care of our children?”
Companies based on the nearby industrial park were unavailable for comment Sunday. Doctors tested the immune systems of 156 of the 200 lead-affected children and found they were in “normal condition”, said Wu Ling.
The district government said it had distributed 2,000 sachets of medicine to children that tested positive for excessive lead.
Professor Gu Haibing at Renmin University of China in Beijing said the Chinese public has been widely exposed to lead through industrial waste and urged the government to take stricter measures to prevent pollution accidents.
The Implementation Plan on Controlling Heavy Metal Pollutions, which was passed in principle by the ministry last Friday, demands joint measures by relevant departments to avoid further pollution by heavy metal smelting industries, especially lead poisoning.
The plan is still to be approved by the State Council.
It is the third report of children suffering lead poisoning this month, with cases also exposed in Fengxiang, Shaanxi province, and Wugang, Hunan province, where around 2,100 youths living beside smelting plants have been affected, with 200 hospitalized.
Officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection have handed the investigation into the Kunming case over to the local environmental protection bureau.
The results are expected this week, but a spokesman for the bureau at the weekend said the excessive levels of lead in the children’s blood had been caused by factors such as car exhaust emissions, and had no direct link with industrial pollutants.
Parents in Tongdu disagreed and blamed the poisoning on a nearby industrial park.
Children in Kunming, capital of Southwest China’s Yunnan province, have become the latest victims of a string of lead poisoning cases to hit China this month.
Medics at the Healthcare Center for Women and Children in Tongdu township, part of the city’s Dongchuan district, found 200 out of 1,000 kids given routine blood tests between June and August had excessive levels of lead.
The normal lead content ranges from zero to 100 micrograms per liter of blood (mcg/l). A level of more than 100 mcg/l is excessive and more than 200 mcg/l is severe.
“About 200 children have excessive lead in their blood. Their levels are all higher than 100 mcg/l but lower than 200 mcg/l,” hospital director Wu Ling told China Daily Sunday.
Meanwhile, powerhouse Japan came home without having won a gold medal in the men’s events for the first time at a judo world championships after both national champion Takamasa Anai and Yasuyuki Muneta were defeated on the final day of competition.
Double world champion Muneta missed out on a medal when he suffered a third round loss to Mongolia’s Gankhuyag Dorjpalam in their +100kg bout, while Anai was knocked out in the men’s 100-kilogram quarterfinals.
France’s Teddy Riner retained his title in the +100kg division, beating Cuba’s Oscar Bryson for gold. Uzbekistan’s Abdullo Tangriev and Lithuania’s Marius Paskevicius both took bronze medals.
In the men’s -100kg category, Kazakhstan’s Maxim Rakov took gold by scoring an ippon success over Dutchman Henk Grol.
Olympic champion Tong Wen of China won the women’s +78kg gold medal at the judo world championships here on Sunday after beating Karina Bryant of Britain in the final by ippon.
The bronzes went to Cuba’s Idalis Ortiz Boucurt and Japan’s Maki Tsukada.
Tong said her next target was to win the Asian Games title in 2010 on home soil in Guangzhou.
“I think I performed very well throughout the whole competition. I have achieved a lot in the sport, but my goal is to prove it each time and to keep progressing, to become better and better,” she said.
“The power is the beauty of judo. Hopefully the Chinese will be inspired by the success and I hope Chinese judo grows. I hope to perform at the Asian Games in Guangzhou and win a gold medal.”
The 12-nation meeting showed that South America had backed self-determination in an unprecedented way and rejected U. S. hegemony, Chavez said.
On Sunday, Chavez slammed Uribe for failing to understand the concerns of regional leaders who asked him for a copy of the final U.S.-Colombia military agreement.
Chavez also said that trade relations with Colombia have remained frozen since a July 28 decision to freeze fuel exports and trade agreements worth around 7 billion dollars with the country.
Chavez had threatened to cut ties with Colombia if the agreement was signed.
“Every day the chill gets stronger. I have told the foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, to prepare for a full break. Since then we have been ready but we are taking care to bring forward action to prevent what I believe would be a disaster on a historical scale, a war with Colombia,” he said.
He warned that three major resources in Latin America are coveted, which are Venezuela’s oil, the forest riches of the Amazon and Uruguay’s aquifers.
Colombia has found itself isolated at Friday’s South American summit due to its intention to allow more U.S. military presence in the South American country, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela said here Sunday.
The extraordinary summit of South American Union of Nations (Unasur) is called to discuss the decision made by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to allow the installation of seven U.S. military bases on the Colombian territory.
The move has come under strong criticism as many countries warned of U.S. military expansion in the region.
“We don’t want yankee bases in South America,” the out-spoken Chavez told foreign media at Miraflores Palace, the president’s official residence in Caracas.