It was a busy day Wednesday for Arrowsmith Search and Rescue, with two overlapping calls into rugged areas — including one that saw an injured woman flown to safety by helicopter.
Having one rescue blend into another isn’t all that uncommon, said team manager Nick Rivers. “It happens more than you’d think.”
The first call came about 1 p.m. when the B.C. Ambulance Service relayed a request to help a quad rider who had been hurt when her vehicle rolled over and went down a 200-metre embankment.
“Luckily, she did not roll down with the vehicle,” the rescue service said in a statement.
The woman was riding on a mountain in the Cook Creek area, north of Horne Lake. The lake is north of Port Alberni and west of Qualicum Beach.
Members of the rescue crew got to the woman’s location via a utility-terrain vehicle and West Coast Helicopter sent an aircraft. During the rescue operation, Highway 19 was closed several times to allow the helicopter to land and pick up additional rescuers.
First aid was performed on the woman on the mountain and she was carried to a spot chosen as a landing zone. She was then put in a stretcher, placed in the helicopter and flown down to a waiting ambulance.
The woman was treated for suspected broken bones and internal injuries.
“She’ll have some time to recover in hospital, for sure,” Rivers said.
The second call came in about 2:45 p.m. from the RCMP, which had heard from two hikers around Mount Cokely south of Cameron Lake.
“They were about six kilometres up from the highway,” Rivers said.
He said they been on a trail and then got turned around.
“We sent some teams up there and located them and then brought them down,” Rivers said. “They were able to walk out.”
Those cases were preceded on Tuesday by a call to locate a couple that had gone missing in Englishman River Falls Provincial Park. They had gone off a trail and were on a logging road.
Searchers were able pinpoint the signal from a cellphone and found them within 22 minutes of the call being received.
Crew members were able to drive right up to them and get them straight to their parked vehicle.
“A happy — and quick — search-and-rescue task complete,” rescue service said.
