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Stranded people rescued from ice Mission to save 30 tourists and hunters one of the largest ever in Nunavut
Myles Dolphin
Northern News Services
Published Monday, July 1, 2013
IKPIARJUK/ARCTIC BAY
More than 30 tourists and hunters are back on solid ground in Arctic Bay after a harrowing experience in which they were trapped on separate ice floes.
Danny Taqtu, a guide from Arctic Bay, walks away from a CH-146 Griffon helicopter along with other tourists and staff of Arctic Kingdom on June 26. The group was stuck for approximately 30 hours on a drifting chunk of ice in Admiralty Inlet. - photo courtesy of Thomas Levi |
The 20 tourists and staff, travelling with adventure group Arctic Kingdom, became stranded in the early morning of June 25 when a large section of floe ice broke off from the mainland approximately 40 kilometres north of Arctic Bay, at Admiralty Inlet.
The group of 11 hunters, also stranded on a nearby chunk of floe ice, were able to make it back to land during the afternoon of June 25 while rescue efforts for the tourists continued until June 26.
Matt Binkley, expedition chef with Arctic Kingdom, said he realized something was wrong when he woke up on June 25 to cook breakfast and noticed the floe edge was 700 feet from their camp.
The group had been camping in the location for five weeks and had set up camp about 20 kilometres back from the floe edge.
"That was pretty big," he said. "The hunters were on the other side. From that point on, I was on alert to the fact that we might move."
Strong southern winds and currents caused the piece of ice - between 20 and 30 kilometres long - to break off from floe edge.
The group of tourists kept track of their location with their GPS and fortunately the winds and currents pushed the ice floe back towards land on June 26.
The next morning, tourists packed their bags and Binkley was told to prepare food kits in the event of an emergency.
"We started prioritizing everything, figuring out what we could bring and what we could leave behind," he said.
"From then on, every time we stepped out to look at the mountains they kept changing location."
Once safely on land, Binkley and other Arctic Kingdom employees returned to camp to dismantle the rest of the equipment.
Niore Iqalukjuak, Arctic Bay's search and rescue co-ordinator, said he first found out about
the trapped hunters and tourists on Tuesday morning and
began working with the
RCMP around 9:30 a.m.
"We first thought we were trying to conduct search and rescue for the hunters who were stranded, because we knew those guys were drifting," he said, adding the hunters were equipped with a satellite phone and SPOT device.
"Later on that day we found that Arctic Kingdom was also on a chunk of ice that was moving. When one of the trapped hunters came back to Arctic Bay he told me not to send anyone out there, because it was too windy and dangerous."
A CC-130 Hercules from Winnipeg was the first rescue aircraft to reach the stranded groups at approximately 3 p.m. on June 25, stated a Canadian Armed Forces news release.
Survival equipment including food, 20-person life rafts and a satellite phone were dropped and the tourists were eventually extracted in groups of 10 by two CH-146 Griffon helicopters between 3 and 6 p.m. on June 26.
The rescue was one of the largest to ever take place in the Arctic.
Six aircraft from the Royal Canadian Air Force, the RCMP, Nunavut Protection Services and Emergency Measures Organization Iqaluit took part in the rescue mission.
Iqalukjuak said the Griffon helicopters, coming from Eureka, initially ran into some fog near Grise Fiord and were temporarily grounded there.
A CH-149 Cormorant helicopter deployed from Gander, N.L., made it as far as Hall Beach where it refuelled but it had to turn back because of the weather.
"This type of incident doesn't happen very often but it'll happen once in a while," Iqalukjuak said.
"Sometimes you don't expect stuff like this to happen. I think it was a combination of strong southern winds and currents, and the fact there was no ice in Lancaster Sound to stop the ice from Admiralty Inlet."
Arctic Kingdom issued a statement on its website on June 26, thanking rescue organizations for their help and support.
Company president Graham Dickson said the group purposefully set up camp a long way from the floe edge, knowing there was a risk something like this could happen.
"We anticipate ice floe to move but we don't anticipate 20 to 30 kilometres of ice to move at once," he said.
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