Missing Girl in Northern Ont

Normark

Normark

Joined
Nov 7, 1999
Messages
6,651
Hey Guys..

There is a missing girl (20) somewhere in a provincial park near Lake Superior Provincial park in northern Ontario.
She's now on day 5, and is lost in dense bush. As I understand it the Police are having a hard time navigating the bush...

Don't you think in a case like this they should be having a professional SAR team doing the searching ??

Has anyone heard about this or having any updates? Please post if you hear anything..

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
Yes, I certainly do think they should have one or more professional SAR teams out there looking for her, along with one or more good tracking dogs! This sort of incident always bothers me. If I were in charge of the western world I would make it a law to teach every kid -- starting in the first grade and repeating it every year until they finish school -- that if they ever get lost, even "just a little lost," they must sit down, get comfortable, stay where they are, and blow the loudest whistle there is until someone comes to find them. I am old now and I stick close to home, but I always have one of these whistles on my keyring. http://www.storm-whistles.com/?gclid=CO3LrPOk7I0CFQlQWAodrDd1sA
 
this is from the online national Post:Christina Calayca's family is worried sick about her. The 20-year-old Toronto woman went missing four days ago while camping in the rugged, potentially precarious terrain of a Northern Ontario provincial park. Christina, a cousin and two young male friends, all members of a Catholic youth group, spent the long weekend in Rainbow Falls Provincial Park, near Thunder Bay. She went on a jog with one of the guys Monday morning, grew tired and turned to head back to the camp site, her aunt Karen Young told me. But the young woman did not return. "The terrain is just so rugged that you could very easily get lost, or something could happen to you," Ms. Young says. "There are cliffs and rocks." Christina's mother, Elizabeth Rutledge, and five of her uncles, including Ms. Young's husband, traveled to Rainbow Falls, but the bush is so dangerous that civilians are not being allowed to search, Ms. Young said. Trained search and rescue units, K9 units, the OPP's Northwest Region Emergency Response Team a helicopter and a marine unit have been looking for Christina since Monday
 
Hey Guys...
Dr.

Yaa I agree...

There should be a professional SAR team that is trained and can stay out in the bush for as long as needed..

It's senseless to send out search parties, then retract them.A trained team could stay in the bush as long as needed...

No offense to the OPP officers on the search, doing their best..

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
runningboar said:
Is this meant to be funny? There is a girl lost, hopefully still alive and the only thing you can think to do is crack some lame joke? :mad:
Click to expand...

I wasn't making fun of the missing girl. I was joking on the canucks. Lighten up Francis!
 
flnder said:
but the bush is so dangerous that civilians are not being allowed to search,
Click to expand...

How absurd. There are probably many citizens who are FAR more qualified to be in the bush than the police. What a wasted resource.
 
As a member of a local SAR group, I'd agree with Eric. Let us do the bush wacking for you! That's why we train! Police are better suited for other needs. We have trackers that are very good to say the least, and we do it all for NOTHING, free, gratis, no charge! If lucky, we might get paid for fuel, and we love it!! Good luck, and I hope it turns out well!
 
Dr. Mudd said:
... if they ever get lost, even "just a little lost," they must sit down, get comfortable, stay where they are, and blow the loudest whistle there is until someone comes to find them. I am old now and I stick close to home, but I always have one of these whistles on my keyring.
Click to expand...

Works in reverse, too: whenever I took my daughter out to the park I would emphasize the big orange Fox 40 whistle I keep on my keyring. Any time she heard me blow 3 blasts on that, she was supposed to stop right where she was till I caught up or told her it was 'all clear'.

If that young woman was jogging, she was on some sort of trail. It's hard to get lost on a trail -- unless you're tired, not thinking clearly, or run into trouble, like some large animal. They probably should both have returned together.
 
Sucks, sad..If people only read atleast one book on the wilderness before going into it, I think this would happen alot less.:(
 
i believe that Ontario should follow BC's example in terms of search and rescue.


we have the North Shore Search and Rescue team... which is a team that consists of approximately 40 volunteers skilled in search and rescue operations in mountain, canyon and urban settings. (http://www.northshorerescue.com/)

BCSARA - British Columbia Search And Rescue Association (www.bcsara.com/)

BCSARA has a database of all the SAR teams in BC. list available at http://www.bcsara.com/showall.php
take a look at the link because its one damn long link.. pretty much a highly responsive SAR team in every region of bc.


in a way i believe that this issue could be resolved alot better.... i know plenty of forumites including eric himself who are very skilled people in the bush. this girl has been gone for 5 days and we are un-aware of her status. nor do we know how well prepared she is or her level of physical condition. also she may have conditions such as heart problems which require medication.

valuable time has been wasted (5 days is quite a long time... here in bc if a person is reported missing in a provincial park the SAR team is deployed within 24hours - there was a case with missing hikers on mount seymour who were discovered approx. 30 hours after declared missing.. they found the pair off trail and one of them had a broken leg.. both survived thanks to the quick deployment of north shore search and rescue) if the officers would allow civilian volunteer SAR teams the man power would increase many folds as well as the chances of find this girl alive...


just a thought... also makes you think about how well prepared YOU are... i dont mean in-terms of survival because most people here on the w&s carry psk's and what not on their hikes but if it was YOUR family member... your daughter... wife.. sister or niece who was out there lost in the woods... how well do you think you could cope with that? would you rush into the woods to search for her? do you think it'll play a large psychological role on you.. possibly affecting your judgement skills..

just a thought... education is key to survival.. like ray mears said.. knowledge is something we carry in our minds and muscles and it doesnt weigh a thing... so perhaps proper knowledge is the key... i know i woulda loved a woods course or survival class in highschool that'd been awesome :D

cheers.
 
This is a looooong and complicated story (as I understand it) of why there is VERY few SAR teams in Ontario.

There use to be 20+ yrs ago. Almost all ground SAR teams are volunteers but consider themselves unpaid professionals, and they are.

The short version of the story is the OPP police union received a grievance basically saying that SAR teams were taking away call out overtime money from off duty OPP officer's and this violated their collective agreement.
Suffice to say most SAR teams folded after the court upheld the grievance. In Ont the OPP have jurisdiction over searches unlike most provinces where the RCMP do and have a good working relationship with the teams in other provinces.

The RCMP are a good SAR incident command outfit.

The vast majority of police, (OPP is no exception) are not trained searchers and very few have search management training in order to run a search effectively. They literally beat the bush with sticks and walk in a congo line for the most part which is no way to conduct a search.

So yes "properly" trained civilian teams should be given the job to manage and perform the search. There are still a few teams in Ont but only a small fraction of what they once were. Because of the history of all this there is a very poor (properly trained) amount of SAR teams in Ontario which is very sad as its the lost person who looses in the end.

All for the sake of money. Pisses me off to no end.

They really have little idea what they are doing, I have seen it first hand.


Prayers sent to Christina Calayca and her family. If it were me I would be questioning the search and management of it legally in court. They are now asking for the help of untrained volunteers which usually is a last resort and causes more confusion than anything else. Got that T-shirt. This is shaping up to be an example of how not to run a search IMHO.

http://www.chroniclejournal.com/stories.php?id=58916

Moral of the story. Dont get lost in Ontario.

Skam
 
I was up around Lake Superior Park less than two months ago planting trees. Let me tell you, it is very, very easy to get lost up there. We would plant tree in cleared areas, but there was still a lot of brush and residual trees. A lot of people would get disoriented in the clearings! If you walk ten or twenty feet into the dense forest, you might never find your way out.
 
Hey Guys...

Skammer..

Very interesting...

So ego and Dollars trump common sense in Ont..Figures...

jca.

I've heard about BC's SAR...

I use to get a copy of SAR magazine everytime it came out..

Skammer..

Where are you from in Ont ??

Prayers also sent!

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
Sad story, Skam. A real contrast with my limited and ancient experience in California. LEO's there (and then) were happy to have trained civilian help and treated us very well.
 
skammer said:
This is a looooong and complicated story of why there is VERY few SAR teams in Ontario.

There use to be 20+ yrs ago. Almost all ground SAR teams are volunteers but consider themselves unpaid professionals, and they are.

The short version is the OPP police union received a grievance basically saying that SAR teams were taking away call out overtime money


So yes "properly" trained civilian teams should be given the job to manage and perform the search.

Moral of the story. Dont get lost in Ontario.

Skam
Click to expand...

Thanks for the very good info. This is new to me and
it is shocking. I expect a certain amount of corruption,
laziness, arrogance; but not when lives are at stake.

I agree about not getting lost, but for those who have a choice,
why even vacation in Ontario? Ontario is canoe country that I
wanted to visit someday, but this thing really bothers me.

There are lots of other choices, for most of us.
I might go back to Alberta or BC.

It ain't just "lost" where you might need SAR:
If you broke an ankle, got injured by a bear, or
some other mishap, you might still need SAR.

My hat is off to SAR guys/gals.

Thinking of PLB or SatPhone for next time I go North.
2 GPS's + extra batteries is a given.
 
I think it needs to be said that there are SAR teams in the province but few and they only get called (and thus only get good experience) when TSHTF and the police "need" them.

The few that are working the case are doing their best including the police but for a large province like Ontario you'd think they would lead the way in SAR but this is sadly not the case.

PLB's are a good idea. So is some basic woods skills.

Skam
 
Canada is a great place to vacation and
I have found Canadians to be so amiable.

In both BC and Alberta I met people from
many provinces and they would go out of
their way to be helpful.
 
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