Search suspended for man swept away by South Saskatchewan River

“A young fellow actually swam after him and tried to save him,” said Mapstone while pointing out the exact location he entered the water on a map inside their command centre.

Many people have suggested searchers should have been looking further downstream given how fast the river has been flowing. But Mapstone says drowning victims become less buoyant and most often sink somewhere in the general vicinity of where they were last seen.

Mapstone says if they’re able to start up the search again soon they’ll be concentrating on the same area as before, but if too much time passes they may have to rethink that plan.

“As the river conditions change and as the temperature in the river goes up things could change as to where we may find this person,” she said. “So we may need to expand that search area depending how long that timeline is.”

After a dangerous dive mission Saturday was unsuccessful in retrieving the man’s body searchers — who have been emotionally invested in providing the victim’s family with closure — were demoralized.

“Every time a diver would go in we’d be excited thinking ‘This is it’ and the diver would come out and we’d be crushed,” said Ryan.

On Sunday searchers tried to provide the missing man’s mother with an idea of what they’ve been up against by bringing her out on one of the boats.

“(She) came to the realization fairly quickly that same as us that searching in these conditions, no matter how long we were in that area, we were not going to find anything,” says Ryan.

Finite resources, for Mapstone and SEASAR in particular, are also playing a factor in the search’s postponement.

“To field specialty teams like we do with our boat team it takes a high level of training, and I only have so much manpower as a volunteer team,” said Mapstone. “That will take me a little bit of time; we’ll rebuild it, have a new search effort and get out there and put 100 per cent into it.”

The missing man’s family thanked searchers in a press release the day of the postponement for “Going above and beyond to help search for their son”.

by CHAT TV Medicine Hat (Matt Nemeth)

Search suspended for man swept away by South Saskatchewan River

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