This is the third instalment in a four-part series on survival on the land. Next week, a look at new emergency beacons that could simplify search and rescue efforts.
Stephanie McDonald
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 14, 2008
HALL BEACH - When people go missing on Nunavut's vast land in an unforgiving climate, it's people like Anne Curley and Jimmy Akavak who, racing against the clock, give search parties direction.
Curley, a Hall Beach resident, has been helping co-ordinate search and rescue operations off and on since 1989.
Anne Curley: has helped co-ordinate search and rescue operations since 1989. |
In November she was called upon again when three members of the community went missing in en route to Iglulik.
The first step to any search and rescue is to get general information from family members, "to find out what state you might expect them to be in," Curley said.
She asks what type of machine the lost person is on, how they were dressed and what supplies they took with them.
One incident in particular has stuck with Curley. Five hunters were out on the floe edge one February in the early 1990s when one froze to death.
"The qamutiik that was carrying the body fell through a crack ... The ice went back to how it was before so they couldn't get the qamutiik back on the ice," she said.
The four men walked to a cabin outside of the community, where they were eventually found, but some lost limbs from the incident. One had to have both his legs amputated from the knees down.
"It's stressful at the end of the search. You don't realize it during the search," she said.
The number of search and rescues vary year by year, depending on the weather, but Curley estimates there is an average of five annually in Hall Beach.
"Most of the time the people are found in good conditions," she said.
Yet, she has been involved in operations where people were lost in the water and some where people had to be medevaced. Others were never found.
Cpl. Jimmy Akavak has been involved in search and rescue operations since joining the RCMP 24 years ago. In the past five years he has become more directly involved, working as the volunteer media liaison for Iqaluit Search and Rescue.
During an operation, Akavak stays in the command post and contacts the media, RCMP and family members as well as communicating with the searchers every hour.
Most search and rescue operations take place in the spring and fall when weather conditions are unstable and the ice is unpredictable, Akavak said.
Most commonly, a search is necessary when someone becomes lost or his or her snow machine breaks down or becomes stuck. Trouble arises when people haven't brought a means of communication with them.
"You remember the lengthy one where it takes you more than a day," he said of the anxious time awaiting word on the status of missing people.
Some searches in the Iqaluit area have lasted as long as six or seven days.
"Those are more tiring. They require a lot of co-ordination. It drains the energy out of you, if you don't watch it," Akavak said.
A common mistake he sees is that some travellers don't notify family members where they are going.
"If you don't know where someone went and you're just guessing, you're like a little dot in the vast land we have here," Akavak said.
The biggest mistake people make when out on the land, Curley said, is not staying in one place.
People will often drive until they are out of gas or until their Ski-Doo breaks down, she said.
"When they don't know where they are they should stop and wait instead of trying to go back," she said. "It makes it harder for the search party to locate them if they've travelled further out."
