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North Shore Rescue teams 'run off their feet'

Record call volume taxes team's ability to muster searchers
NSR

It’s a summer North Shore Rescue’s members are probably glad to see the end of.

The all-volunteer team was called out for seven search and rescue missions over the Labour Day long weekend, ending what has been one of the busiest summers in recent memory.

“Oh man, it’s shocking,” team leader Mike Danks said with an exasperated laugh. “August was three times the normal amount and for September, we’re already past our quota.”

The team typically gets between 80 and 100 calls per year. August alone saw 29.

The busy weekend started Friday afternoon when West Vancouver police asked for rescuers’ help in a “silver alert” — a senior with dementia walking away from home.

Saturday afternoon saw a cascade of calls, starting with an RCMP request for help in finding an emotionally disturbed person on Mount Seymour. They then were dispatched to Whyte Lake on the eastern side of Hollyburn Mountain where a woman was stranded on a cliffband. The subject had two dogs with her, one of which was injured and couldn’t get out on its own. North Shore Rescue volunteer Scott Merriman loaded the injured pup, Sumi, into a backpack and hiked the dog out on foot.

dog rescue
North Shore Rescue volunteer Scott Merriman hikes injured pup Sumi out of the backcountry. - photo supplied

Just 15 minutes after the rescue was concluded the team got a call for help from Lions Bay Search and Rescue to aid in a long-line rescue of someone who suffered a backcountry ankle injury. Before the Talon helicopter could even head for home, as darkness was setting in, the team got one more call — one of the most difficult ones of the summer.

A 68-year-old German tourist had gotten off-trail between the BCMC and Bluff trails on Grouse Mountain and wound up stranded at the base of a 60-metre cliff above a waterfall.

“They didn’t get him out until 5:30 a.m.,” Danks said. “I’ve got to say, ‘Huge respect’ to all the North Shore Rescue members that were out for nine hours on that call doing some very technical rope rescue skills and then went into work in the morning.”

Volunteers were back out again Sunday afternoon when they were called to Brothers Creek to rescue a woman with a fractured ankle and then back to Lions Bay to help find a Russian hiker reported missing.

Such heavy call volume is taxing the team’s ability to muster searchers, Danks said. Before he died, former team leader Tim Jones had been lobbying the province to provide more sustainable funding and on-call pay for the team’s most active members.

“I think the challenge is we’re being run off our feet with calls and we don’t have the resources to fight that battle with the provincial government, but something needs to change because as it stands now, it’s not sustainable,” Danks said.

The biggest thing the public can do to help, Danks said, is donating, allowing rescuers to focus on rescues.

To celebrate the team’s 50th anniversary, North Shore Rescue will host an open house at its 61 Bewicke Ave. rescue base on Sunday. Danks said he hopes the public will come gain an appreciation for the organization’s history and its early members.

“They’re the ones who shaped the team to what it is today. We’re really pushing for the public to come out and meet these guys and ask them about stories from the past where they had rescues that would last three to five days sometimes with little support from aircraft,” he said. “They were hard men back then.”

One of those old-timers, however, said the event is meant to be a celebration of North Shore Rescue’s many supporters. “We wouldn’t be able to do anything without the support of so many organizations and people, and the provincial government and (Emergency Management BC),” Gerry Brewer said.