‘Stay put:’ missing man starts fire to get help along Nanaimo Lakes Road

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The man was travelling to Nanaimo from his Seattle home when he became stuck.

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'Stay put:' missing man starts fire to get help along Nanaimo Lakes Road

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He was located safe the following morning along Nanaimo Lakes Rd. after the vehicle he was driving became stuck.

The small fire he lit was noticed by nearby forestry workers, who came to his aid.

Trobridge told NanaimoNewsNOW while they weren’t called to respond to this most recent case, they have responded to similar calls in the past, with technology usually playing a factor.

“The best thing to do is not trust Google Maps or any other mapping software when you’re trying to, say, commute from Victoria to Nanaimo or further north and it’s giving you a work around. These are forest service roads, their logging roads, they’re heavily trafficked with industrial traffic and they’re generally not safe for the average commuter, but if you do find yourself stuck, making yourself known to any workers in the area is great.”

She said leaving a trip plan with family or friends, including your route taken and expected times of arrival, is a great idea when travelling to unfamiliar areas or long distances.

If you find yourself stranded and in need of emergency assistance, the same rules apply if you’re on the side of the road or lost on the side of a mountain.

The first rule of survival in those situations is to stay where you are, with past SAR rescues in the Nanaimo Lakes area involving people stranded in their vehicles for days before being found.

“They did the absolute right thing by staying with their vehicle. There are cases where maybe that’s not safe…but the general rule of thumb would be to stay put. Somebody will be looking for you in fairly short order, especially if you’ve left a trip plan. It makes it a lot easier to know where you are and where to look with that trip planned, and once the vehicle is found, to have you there with it, rather than having to start another search from the vehicle.”

She said that while emerging and evolving technology can lead to issues for some people, it can also come in handy to solve those issues.

LifeSeeker is a helicopter-mounted technology which basically turns it into a cellphone tower, which can ping the cellphone of a missing person to determine their location within a one-kilometre radius, even in areas without reception.

Last September, Nanaimo SAR responded to a mutual aid request from North Shore Rescue to locate a missing ebiker on the Doumont Trails. They were able to pinpoint his location using LifeSeeker.

The Nanaimo RCMP reported the man was taken for medical assessment out of an abundance of caution and was reunited with his son.

His family thanks everyone who assisted and shared information during the search.

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