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Carol_Hill said:
The planes are a HUGE tourist attraction and fining people would just give the island more bad publicity. And St. Maarten cops have a whole lot of things they need to do to address crime and do not have the money or resources to devote to such an operation. I think that a jet blast wall would make landing more difficult and dangerous for the airplanes, and that is obviously not something that would be a good thing. I suppose that one could make it so that there is no space to stand beside the road. That would at least be a start, I guess. Although of course more people would then just walk in the road, which is already very dangerous. I see many people, especially locals, walk by the end of the runway there all the time. At least part of the reason is because they don't want to walk in the sand on the other side. What would be nice is if there were a paved walkway on the side of the road, so that people could walk over there, out of the road but not on the sand. However, since the sand comes and goes so much there, not sure how practical that would be either. It's a conundrum. I have no more knowledge than anyone here, but I suspect the only thing they could do is to try to eliminate any space between the fence and the road in the hopes of preventing people from walking or standing there. I don't know how you do that though.


I agree. You can't eliminate the attraction, perhaps make it a more positive experience? ("Stand here, here and here, don't ever stand here") The Fine is just an idea, and perhaps completely unenforceable, given other priorities.

Unfortunately its easy for me to witness the potential danger and sit back at my keyboard come up with arm chair solutions.

Its sad, tragic, and thoroughly avoidable. I hope the authorities and the islands tourism leaders find a way to solve the problem.


Never walk onto a job site with empty hands. - Source Unknown