A woman plucked from a logjam after tumbling over a waterfall in Wally Creek this week is heaping praise on the rescue team that responded and the bystanders who helped her.
Casey Munro and her three children visited the creek, located about halfway between Port Alberni and Tofino, on Wednesday after her father told her about a good swimming spot there.
There were several people swimming when they arrived, so she wasn’t too worried about the conditions, Munro said. “But I made the cardinal sin of not looking downstream to see what was next, and so I had absolutely no idea there was a waterfall.”
By the time she realized where the waterfall was, her 10-year-old daughter had ventured dangerously close to the edge.
“I tried swimming over to help her and just immediately went over it,” Munro said. “I think I went over kind of head first. I don’t know if I did a cartwheel or a flip but I landed feet first in the water.”
She said she hit her head partway down the falls, which she was told were as much as nine metres high.
“It was so scary because I just really had no idea how big the falls were or what was at the bottom,” she said.
Munro managed to make her way to a logjam and climbed onto it, and realized she was bleeding.
She said she thinks she was there for about three hours before the Alberni Valley Rescue Squad arrived, and a member of the squad rappelled down a ravine wall to get to her and lift her to safety.
“They were just so wonderful and made me feel comfortable and secure going up,” Munro said.
The ambulance paramedics waiting for her had been talking to her children to reassure them everything would be fine, she said.
Prior to that, people at the top of the ravine had been calling down to her, and one man was able to get a blanket to her.
“I was getting so cold,” Munro said.
She had special thanks for two off-duty firefighters who made sure her children were safe.
“I praise God that I escaped with only a bruised ankle, five stitches and a headache for the last few days,” Munro said. “I definitely thought I was going to die when I first went over the top of the falls.”
Munro, husband Jesse and the children were planning to be on Vancouver Island for about three weeks after making the trip from Saskatchewan in a bus specially fitted with a hospital bed for Jesse, who has complex medical needs from multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair.
“It’s just my goal to get him out and about with the kids,” she said.
But in another unfortunate turn, the transmission in the family’s vehicle failed, and they are now at her father’s home in Nanaimo waiting for it to be repaired. That followed Jesse taking ill and spending two weeks in hospital right after they arrived.
Munro said the family used to have a wheelchair-accessible van, purchased in part through GoFundMe and modified with help from the Kinsmen Club.
They traded it in for the bus, complete with beds for the rest of the family, in order to get Jesse more places.
A fundraising page has been set up to help defray the cost of the transmission repair, which should be done by the middle of next week.
