A Ladysmith coast guard auxiliary crew has been awarded a commendation for their services during a rescue mission on July 29 involving a fatal collision between a boat and a log boom.
The five members of the crew; Owen Popplestone, Lynn Peers, Michael Golletz, Dan Robinson and coxswain Brian Cromp were awarded at the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary (Pacific region) AGM on September 25.
“It’s very cool considering there’s thousands of missions that happen on the coast, so to be recognized as one of the top three missions of the year is quite an achievement,” Cromp said. “This particular night the weather was with us, we weren’t fighting heavy seas, we knew exactly where it was and what the extent was so we were pretty prepared for meeting the challenges we faced.”
The call came in at approximately 11:05 p.m. that night, Cromp recalled.
“We could hear that there was one fatality confirmed by the crew onboard the tug and two other personal injuries and our services to get out there as quickly as possible were required,” he said.
“Quite often the mission will unfold to be a bit different than what you initially perceive, but this one was definitely a medical emergency.”
Once all the appropriate medical supplies were on board, the crew headed out to the scene, picking up RCMP and EMS personnel on the way.
Once on scene, the member with the most advance first aid training attended the victim with head injuries while two other members went out onto the log boom to extract a passenger with a fractured leg.
Night time rescue missions can prove a greater difficulty than daytime missions, Cromp said.
“Whenever you have a mission that involves multiple casualties and/or fatalities, it always raises a fair bit of scrutiny, but given the fact that we had participated (by) applying first aid to severely injured people, worked closely with the EMS and RCMP in the middle of the night, where all was dark… it’s a very high level high stress type mission,” he said. “You don’t have roads to follow, you have to rely on all your electronic navigation.”
The Ladysmith auxiliary, known as Station 29, is the second busiest station on the West Coast, Cromp said.
It has about 20 active members and six active coxswains (also known as skippers, they receive special training to be able to head missions). Because of Ladysmith’s close location to the harbour, they are one of the faster responders, with a response time of about 15 to 20 minutes from call to on the water.
In the past year, they have responded to about 60 calls.
