Recovery effort underway for 4 men, 2 women presumed drowned off B.C. coast: RCMP

6 relieve missing, 4 reclaimed after charter boat sinks in B.C.'s ga sound

Passersby 'saved lives' after charter boat sinking off B.C. Coast: search official

Couple recounts saving lives after boat sinks in Strait of Georgia | Hanomansing Tonight

Retired pilot Brian Angus and flight attendant Dorothy Stauffer describe helping rescue three people after a boat sank in the Strait of Georgia. Search and rescue officials say the couple's quick actions likely saved lives.

Dorothy Stauffer and Brian Angus, who made the first mayday call about the people in the water and rescued survivors, were just asked about how they're feeling more than 24 hours after the dramatic rescue.

Stauffer, who earlier spoke about how her training as a flight attendant was instrumental in the rescue, said the couple was grateful that they showed up when they did — but devastated that they couldn't rescue others who were in the water.

Angus said that search-and-rescue, RCMP and Coast Guard officials have reached out to offer resources and professionals to talk to about the situation, which the couple will make use of.

"I am so happy that we were there at the right time," he said, fighting back tears.

Dan Burritt

I'm out in Steveston where there's a somber mood on the federal government dock today, but not much activity.

The RCMP Underwater Recovery Team has been called in. Because this boat is believed to have gone down in such deep water, they're going to have to determine whether they can actually send divers down to the wreck, or whether or not they'll have to use remote underwater vehicles — essentially little robots that can go down and try and piece together what happened here.

Passersby 'saved lives' after charter boat sinking off B.C. Coast: search official

Maj. Gregory Clarke of the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre says there may not have been any survivors after a charter boat sank in B.C.'s Georgia Strait on Sunday if it weren't for a couple aboard a passing sailboat who called for help. Four people were rescued, and as of Monday evening, six others were missing and presumed drowned.

Rescuers only found out about the emergency because a couple on a sailboat called for help, Victoria's officer-in-charge of search and rescue says.

"Our Coast Guard radio station actively listens 24/7 and there was no indication of any distress when whatever happened, happened," he said. 

Clarke says the couple did the right thing and called for help on the emergency frequency — setting off the massive rescue effort. 

"If it wasn't for them alerting us, we may not have had any survivors," he said.

"We are very grateful. They saved lives."

The Richmond RCMP said its major crimes unit is leading the investigation into the tragedy.

Cpl. Frank Bryson tells us the case is an unusual one. 

He says police aren't ruling anything out, including the possibility of a collision or that criminality was involved. 

"We are just going to look at everything, the totality of everything that happened, and if it is, [our team] will determine that and the steps will be taken."

Bryson couldn't comment on whether the boaters were local. 

But he says police know it's a profoundly difficult situation for their families, and that they are committed to getting answers.

Dorothy Stauffer tells us her decades of experience 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."

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