A spate of cliff diving deaths continued last week with the BC Coroners Service confirming that a Quadra Island man was killed Sept. 4 while diving near a waterfall on West Redonda Island.
A “significant increase” in the number of recreational drowning incidents this summer has prompted Coroner Barb McLintock to reiterate the need for “greater caution around the province’s lakes, rivers and ocean coastline.”
The West Redonda victim has been identified as Jason John Norman Grandberg, 34, from Quathiaski Cove on Quadra Island. Grandberg and family members had sailed from their home on Quadra Island to Teakerne Arm on West Redonda Island on the afternoon of Sept. 4. In the evening, he attempted a cliff dive from the rocks near Cassel Falls.
Grandberg did not surface and rescue attempts at the time were unsuccessful. His body was recovered by an RCMP dive team Sept. 6. The BC Coroners Service is continuing to investigate this death.
This is the third death in B.C. in a month related to the dangerous sport of cliff diving.
On Aug. 19 an RCMP dive team recovered the body of a Surrey man who disappeared underwater two days earlier after jumping off a 50-metre cliff into Whistler’s Anderson Lake. The 26-year-old, whose name has been withheld at the family’s request, had been boating and wakeboarding with five companions. Witnesses said the victim spotted the cliffs above Anderson Lake and decided to climb them in order to dive. When he did not surface, his companions searched for him unsuccessfully, then called for help.
Another cliff diving death occurred on Vancouver Island on the same day. The body of Jamie Collins, 33, of Tofino, was recovered a day after he jumped off a 20-metre cliff into Kennedy River west of Port Alberni.
