Recovery effort underway for 6 people presumed drowned off B.C. coast: RCMP

look called away for 6 missing after charter boat sinks away B.C. Coast

Dorothy Stauffer tells us her decades of see as a flight attendant helped save the lives of three survivors of the sunken boat.

She says the group was clearly hypothermic and was barely able to call for help when she spotted them. One had no clothes on from the waist up.

She says at first, the survivors didn't seem to understand the couple was trying to use the dinghy they were towing as a life-raft. 

"I used my training as a flight attendant," she said.

Stauffer shouted commands to the survivors, telling them to swim to the dinghy and to grab onto its side or the tow rope. 

"We have an acronym, the three As: assess, adapt and then act — and that's what I did," she said.

"I had to assess the situation and then adapt by having Brian drive around the way we did, and then act by yelling at them, barking the orders."

She says a woman was the first to be able to climb on top of the dinghy, but that it took nearly 20 minutes before the other two were able to grab on.

"Life-jackets save lives," he said.

All watercraft are required by law to have a life-jacket or personal flotation device (PFD) on board for each person, according to the federal government.

He estimated a person could survive up to 10 hours with a life-jacket in water temperature of about 15 C

"Without a life-jacket, however, that shrinks dramatically, especially in the open water."

He said life-jackets can also help rescue crews find people in the water.

Clarke said the case is a "tragic reminder" of how important a properly fitted flotation device is.

The six people still missing are presumed to have drowned, the RCMP now say.

In a Monday afternoon update, Richmond RCMP said the victims were four men and two women, and that efforts have now shifted to recovery.

Police are working to notify the victims' next of kin.

A 26-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman have been released from hospital, while a 33-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman remain in critical condition.

Police are still investigating how the boat went down, but say they believe it sank in "very deep waters."

The RCMP's Underwater Recovery Team will be deployed in the area in the coming days to try and find the boat using sonar and to determine whether a dive is feasible or if they'll need to use an underwater drone (remotely-operated vehicle).

It wasn't just search-and-rescue crews and police who joined the massive search effort for survivors of the sunken charter.

When the mayday call went out, several ferries were diverted to help.

One of them was a Hullo foot passenger ferry, while B.C. Ferries also diverted the Queen of Alberni and Coastal Inspiration.

I spoke with Natasha Jung, who was aboard the Queen of Alberni yesterday and described an intense search response. 

"At one point there was a hovercraft. Later on there was a helicopter that came out and I think just other, both commercial as well as recreational types of boats," she said. 

B.C. Ferries says none of its vessels physically removed anyone from the water, and they were cleared to resume their routes around 2 p.m. PT.

The Transportation Safety Board says it's aware of the incident but that so far it isn't deploying investigators. 

"We are currently assessing the occurrence and collecting data," the regulator said in an email.

Transport Canada says it is "closely monitoring" the incident and working with agencies in B.C., including the RCMP and the Canadian Coast Guard, to gather more information.

The RCMP has yet to make a statement on the incident today.

Clarke told me the fact that lives were saved is largely because of the couple — Brian Angus and Dorothy Stauffer — aboard a sailboat who came across the survivors and called in a mayday.

I spoke with the couple last night. Angus is a former commodore with the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and a retired Air Canada captain, and Stauffer is a service director with the airline. 

They said they were on their way from Vancouver to Saturna Island when they saw five people in the water and their training took over. 

They began circling the survivors, using a dinghy they were towing as a life-raft.

"We lost sight of the other two, we decided to just go for the three that were closer together, that's the decision — a hard one — we had to make," Angus told me. 

"The question you have in any incident as a pilot with Air Canada or a boater is: could we have done anything different? And we don't believe we could have."

The couple said there was no wreckage or debris at the scene, and none of the survivors had life-preservers on. Angus and Stauffer stayed at the scene until they were able to transfer the survivors to a Canadian Coast Guard hovercraft.

Clarke told me it was obvious the duo knew what they were doing.

"They knew exactly who to call, exactly how to circle in," he said. "We're very grateful for their response, and I'm not surprised to hear that they had some experience based on how they handled things … they saved lives yesterday."

When I spoke yesterday with Brian Angus and Dorothy Stauffer, the couple who rescued three people with their sailboat, they described rolling seas and winds of about 15 knots. 

Clarke told me that the search area near Roberts Bank is known for strong currents and choppy water because it's where fresh water from the Fraser River meets the colder salt water in the ocean.

Clarke said when crews arrived the wind was manageable and they were dealing with "good search conditions."

Clarke told me crews made the hard call to suspend the search on Sunday after exhausting all avenues to find survivors.

That included using the boat's last known position, drift modelling and deploying live data marker buoys in the water.

They also searched shorelines and considered how long someone could survive in the water without a life-preserver. 

The search involved multiple aircraft, including some equipped with thermal and infrared sensors. 

"We covered the area extensively," he said. 

"We were very confident … that we have exhausted all possibilities of finding anyone on the surface alive."

I just spoke with Maj. Gregory Clarke. He's the officer-in-charge of the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria, who says crews haven't been able to locate the vessel that sank.

The boat is believed to have been a fishing charter that departed from Steveston. He said that it's still unclear what happened to the vessel.

"We have no idea at this time," he said, adding the focus for search and rescue was on recovering people in the water. "There was no sign of any vessel at all, that is what was alarming."

Three of the four people rescued were saved by a sailboat that came upon them in the water, while rescue crews pulled the fourth survivor from the water. A fifth person the sailboat crew spotted disappeared from view fairly quickly, he said.

Steven Chua

I'm in Steveston right now connecting with the local community to try and find more details about this incident. 

Historically, it was a small fishing village in Richmond with a big Japanese Canadian population. 

Its character has changed over the years to become more of a tourist hub, but it has retained its roots as a place for fishing and harbourside activities. 

I've spoken to several fishers and local businesses in the area. I've knocked on the doors of local whale watching companies. I've gone to coffee shops and asked around. 

So far, people expressed dismay and shock about the situation but don't know exactly what happened.

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