Coquitlam SAR says education partly to thank for drop in 2018 call volume

COQUITLAM (NEWS 1130) – There were fewer search and rescue call outs in Coquitlam last year, and it may be in part thanks to the advocacy of a 56-year-old dog walker who was rescued after going missing in November.

Annette Poitras was rescued after spending two nights out in the woods in the pouring rain. She was walking three dogs when she went missing in the Eagle Mountain area.

“She’s been amazing at spreading the message of being prepared for any kind of hike, even the dog walk,” SAR manager Michael Coyle explains. “We think the resulting media attention has totally helped us spread the message of being prepared.”

According to Coquitlam Search and Rescue, teams responded to 37 calls in 2018, a drop from the more than 50 calls the year before.

FILE: Annette Poitras went missing Nov. 20, 2017. She was found on Nov. 22, 2017. (Source: Facebook)

While it’s impossible to really say for sure what’s led to this decrease, Coyle says education and awareness campaigns may have also played a big role.

“In particular, in 2017, we noticed some problems in some areas in Coquitlam, and we had pushed to mark some of those trails, and we know we didn’t have very many incident on the areas that we marked,” he tells NEWS 1130.

Coyle says there are continuing efforts to make sure trails are marked.

“We also had the publication of a map of the Tri-Cities area, and coincidentally the same guy who leads the trail marking project is also the guy who published the map. So we hope that has some effect.”

He stresses the importance of always being prepared, no matter how long you plan to be out for, and says you should always take the 10 essentials when heading out into nature.

“The thing to realize, even walking a dog, even without a dog, if you’re going for a walk on the trails in B.C.’s backcountry, it’s backcountry, right? It turns into wilderness very quickly. The trails are sometimes not maintained or marked.”

It’s very easy to get lost, and that’s one of the things Annette was pointing out is she knew her way around and still she managed to get lost,” Coyle says.

Annette says she just tries to help others she sees on the trails, “Like if they ask me ‘do you know where this is’ and I go ‘yes, it’s like a four hour hike and you don’t really have the proper footwear and clothing’ and they go ‘oh, I didn’t know it was going to be that long.”

She says it’s important to spread the word about outdoor safety and make sure people are adequately prepared.

However, not everyone is heeding the warnings. North Shore Rescue, for example, saw a record number of call outs in 2018.

While Coyle can’t speak for the NSR, he says he doesn’t envy the situation that SAR group is in.

“Because they have the three ski hills, they’re exceptionally easy to get to at the top of the hill, to get out on those trails and to get into trouble.”

-With files from Dean Recksiedler and Lasia Kretzel