SaltWire E-Edition

Father questions lack of SAR resources in southern Labrador

EVAN CAREEN THE TELEGRAM evan.careen @thetelegram.com @evancareen

The lack of search and rescue infrastructure in southern Labrador has been drawn into sharp focus recently for the father of a fisherman reported missing on Sept. 17.

Marc Russell and Joey Jenkins didn’t return from a cod fishing trip near Battle Harbour and were reported missing that evening. Marc’s father, Dwight Russell, said it wasn’t until then that he really realized how little support there was.

The Coast Guard was initially deployed and were hampered by weather the next day. Then, 48 hours after the official search began, it was called off and turned over to the RCMP as a missing persons case.

“With your son out there missing, it’s a pretty empty feeling, a pretty hollow feeling. I never thought it was like this,” Russell told Saltwire.

“I was up in Twillingate recently and there was a fast rescue craft, there was one in Port Saunders, there was one in St. Anthony and I think there’s some on the south coast and west coast of the island. Then I look at this whole expanse of shoreline and we have nothing.”

Russell said his son grew up around and, on the water, which is common in fishing communities, and has been fishing with him since he was 15. He’d bought a boat this year to go cod fishing and brought a friend of his along. This was supposed to be their last trip of the season.

As the day began to wane on Sept. 17 and they hadn’t come in, Russell started to get concerned.

“I called over to the plant and (Marc and Joey) had called there but (the worker) couldn’t understand what he was saying. By the time he got out by the door, Marc was gone. That was 4:14. We know at 4:17 that same number called his crewmate’s home, too,” he said.

Russell figures his son was letting the plant know they were coming in for the evening and when they didn’t show up, he started asking around. No one had seen them, so he reported them missing.

Labrador MP Yvonne Jones posted on social media on Sept. 20 that following the decision of the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax to call off the search, the minister of National Defence had authorized the use of military aircraft, and the minister for the Coast Guard authorized the use of Coast Guard resources, coordinated by the RCMP.

The RCMP sent out a release on Wednesday, Sept. 22, that said an aircraft carrying two members trained as spotters is continuing to search aerial grids and Coast Guard ship Captain Molly Kool is currently in St. Anthony for a crew change and will be returning.

The RCMP underwater recovery team and Deer Lake Ground Search and Rescue, equipped with a side-scan sonar, were scheduled to arrive in Mary’s Harbour Wednesday to assist in the search efforts and the MV Ocean Seeker of Kraken Robotics, equipped with advanced underwater equipment and under current contract with NL Hydro, has been approved by the provincial government to assist with the search. Many local boats have also joined the search.

The support they have received from local politicians, the community and the RCMP has been great, Russell said, but he questions why there isn’t more resources stationed in the area.

“If we can’t handle this then we really have to wonder what’s going on with our country,” he said. “Now I have to make sure going forward this gets better, it should get better, that there’s accountability.

“There’s a lot of work that’s needs to be done. I don’t blame anyone; I blame myself more than anyone for not preventing it from happening. But it did happen and at the end of the day all we can do is try to make things better.”

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2021-09-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://saltwire.pressreader.com/article/281582358774346

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