Quesnel RCMP requested assistance to help assist with a person being carried in the current of the Fraser River on Tuesday (June 30) night.
Public Information Officer Bob Hollowenko says one of their members noticed a heavy RCMP presence on the river bank shortly after 8 o’clock when they were returning to town from a call earlier in the day.
Hollowenko says they deployed a drone from the convergence of the rivers, where the Quesnel and the Fraser converge, and followed the subject by the air for a short distance before the person ended up outside of their view.
“After that, two coordinated teams were sent river left and river right, meaning one on the left side of the river and one on the east side of the river, to establish what we call our path eye in the sky or basically drone spotters. They were able to essentially create a bit of a visual wall to know where the subject was, so that the river boats, we had two of them, could be sent to the subject’s location. Additionally, we had a helicopter that came from downstream and did an upstream sweep and that was the fine work of Central Cariboo Search and Rescue. (Williams Lake) So all in all we had spotters on the ground, in the air, and on the water.”
Hollowenko says after all that the subject was able to self rescue and get themselves out of the water.
“We’re not certain where, it may have been earlier or at least further upstream than we had, it’s called vectoring the river at or paced the river at, so we believe that they were able to get out relatively close to where we lost sight of them. However, we’re not privy to that information.”
Hollowenko says they had searched until the sun set at around 10 o’clock.
“Our team members were out until the sun had fully set and then began returning. Due to the fact that all of those operations, either by ground, by air or by water, all sort of have a drop dead time that safety becomes a significant concern. So both river boats had returned, all of the drones had to be been put down and of course the helicopter had to return to its landing area.”
