Terrace Search and Rescue (SAR) stepped away from their usual role July 10 to retrieve two shopping carts from the Skeena River near Ferry Island.
SAR member and bylaw officer Dwayne Sheppard says there have been multiple reports of carts lodged on the banks of the river. Noting the threats they posed, SAR made the decision to collect them during their training session on water.
“I just coordinated those two things together, to go up and grab those shopping carts to reduce some complaints for me and to make the river a little cleaner,” says Sheppard. “It’s not an image that we want to portray to the public, especially when people are coming into Terrace… and it’s a violation of the Fisheries Act to have something like that in the river.”
Not only is it unpleasing to the eye and environmentally unsound, he says it can be a potential risk to the public.
“It’s an obstacle in the river [for boats], but it’s most likely the cart would be more damaged than it,” he says. “And although it’s not an area that people swim in, it definitely could be a foot entrapment for a swimmer.”
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As the water level is currently high, there are still a few carts they weren’t able to reach and will have to wait until they are more visible.
The carts are currently in storage and will eventually be returned to the stores they belong to. Sheppard believes the approximate value of a shopping cart is between $250 to $450.
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