According to fire officials the search for the missing man continues to get harder due to weather conditions. -- NEWS PHOTO MO CRANKER
tkalinowski@medicinehatnews.com @MHNTimKal
After five exhausting days of searching, and a huge emotional rollercoaster ride for all involved, search teams were forced to suspend their efforts to find a young man who is believed to have drowned in the river last Wednesday evening.
Citing poor weather, and dangerous river conditions, search leaders decided they couldn’t ask their people to go out in the water again until conditions improved.
“As of (Sunday) night, we have suspended this portion of the search, due to conditions,” said Cpl. Shane Ryan of the Redcliff RCMP. “The search has been postponed until later when the water levels recede, when they clear, and are safer for our boaters to go out. This last few days, the water has risen considerably, the flow has increased, and with that the debris that is coming down river is getting larger and more frequent; to the tune of having complete trees coming down.”
Ryan admits searchers were left feeling incredibly disappointed after a promising sonar scan seemed to reveal a man-shaped object in the water, near where the young man was last seen between the Parramatta subdivision and Echo Dale Regional Park. Three divers from the Medicine Hat fire department undertook a series of dives at the site, with nearly zero visibility in the river, to examine the object more closely, only to discover it was likely a pile of rocks.
“We thought we were close on Saturday with the dives,” said Ryan. “We found rocks…. That was demoralizing. Everybody went out there with high hopes, and we figured this was it. The family too, because we told them what we had found.”
Ryan said the family was planning to return to British Columbia again on Monday to await word when the river search could resume.
“We’ve been open with the family throughout. They have been here everyday… And we took one of the family members on the boat with us to that area so they could see and experience what our searchers were seeing and experiencing. They came to the realization fairly quickly that searching in conditions, no matter how long we were there in that area, we were not going to find anything.”
Ryan said searchers were postponing the effort, but it would resume again when river conditions were right. Searchers would use this period to catch their breath, take stock, come up with a new search plan, and settle in for the long haul.
“That is something that is one everybody’s mind that is involved with this search. Generally, with (these types of river searches) we find somebody very quickly. Nobody is used to this long term search. That is something we are going to have to cope with.”
