It was a fairly quiet summer for Prince George Search and Rescue who were only called out 15 times between May and September 1st.
Search and Rescue spokesperson, Dave Merritt told MyPGNow.com the calls they did receive had a little bit of variety to them.
“It was varied. We had a lot of river and a lot of water calls – we have a lot of water bodies around Prince George and I would say over half of our calls dealt with water whether that was rivers, lakes, overturned boaters or overdue boaters.”
“We also had some longline rescues around the province to support other SAR teams. There were a lot of evacuation alerts around other communities – that was most of our calls.”
Merritt believes most people are more prepared before venturing out into the wilderness.
“More people are packing satellite communication devices, spot in reaches and Zoleos those sorts of things. That changes things from a search if they need help to a rescue. Instead of taking 23 hours or whatever to find a person we can drive to coordinate to find the person and move on.”
He added the fall season is normally their busiest as they often deal with overdue hunters.
“Fall becomes our busy time as more and more hunters go out and they become overdue or they drop an animal – this happens quite regularly for us. The fall becomes busier with calls and one of the things we remind people of is to call sooner because we have less daylight and it’s harder to fly with a helicopter.”
“We can’t fly in freezing rain, we can’t fly when it’s snowing too hard so there are a lot of things that could potentially hinder the air response but we will still be able to respond by ground whether it’s on foot or ATV’s.”
In all of 2023, PG SAR responded to 36 calls.
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