The Rescuers by Amanda Follett Hosgood
28 July/August 2018
Local search managers convene to create a plan and coordinate equipment. Within an hour or two, they’re out looking for you. Hopefully, you’ve followed a few simple rules of backcountry travel. Letting someone know where you’re going is a start. Carrying a device that allows you to call in your location will speed up the process. Then, sit tight: If all goes well, you’ll be home for breakfast. Ninety-five percent of missing persons are found and rescued within 24 hours. The few searches that continue into a second day are elevated to Level 2. Historically, that happens once or twice a year, says Numan, a Level 2 search manager. Last year, the province saw four within three weeks, a trend that continued into 2018 with several Level 2 searches already this year. One of those was a mushroom picker from Hazelton named Frances Brown, who went missing last October. By Land Dave Jephson, a search manager and instructor with Terrace Search and Rescue, estimates that up to 25 percent of the calls they receive are for missing mushroom pickers. Not only do these foragers tend to walk with eyes glued to the ground, making it easy to lose your bearings, it’s common not to share your destination for fear of giving up your best picking spot. Between mushroom pickers and hunters, it makes fall a busy season. The Bulkley Valley, Houston, Vanderhoof, Atlin, Stewart, and Burns Lake each have their own search and rescue operations, but with close to 70 people on its roster, Terrace is one of the largest and most diverse, with skills like long-line helicopter rescues, swift-water rescue, sonar and
photo: mark west
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he email comes the evening before completing this article. “Here is a live example of what we do,” says Bulkley Valley Search and Rescue (BVSAR) president Fred Oliemans, linking to a CBC story about a search underway for an American family missing in northern BC. The young couple and their children, ages two and three, stare out from my computer screen. My heart sinks. British Columbia’s dramatic landscapes offer infinite peaks and gullies to explore and as many places to get lost. You don’t need to be armpit-deep in devil’s club or traversing a lofty glacier. You don’t need to have embarked on an epic, multi-day mission or be bagging a big peak. You need only to have misplaced a step or the direction of your vehicle. The province also has some of the world’s best search and rescue operations, with 80 teams and 2,500 volunteers. They receive two-thirds of the nation’s calls, with more than 1,600 incidents reported annually—a number four times what it was in the early 1990s, with notable increases over the last couple years. “I think it’s a province where everybody wants to play. There’s so much variety in BC,” says Whitney Numan, a search manager with BVSAR. “It’s something BC’s really good at. We are looked at as leaders in search and rescue and it’s all volunteer.” If you’re out adventuring and lose your way, here’s what happens when you don’t turn up for dinner: Someone—hopefully—calls RCMP to report your absence. If you’re believed to be in a remote area, RCMP will call Emergency Management BC and its Emergency Coordination Centre contacts search and rescue.
