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Rescuers battle conditions to reach hiker
Times Colonist9 July 1997p. 3Kim Westad, Times Colonist staffSooke SAR era
Kim Westad, Times Colonist staff. “Rescuers battle conditions to reach hiker”, Times Colonist, p. 3, 9 July 1997 ref-only
Summary
Thirty volunteers slipped and slid through rain, fog and mud on the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail to reach an injured hiker after a call came in on the Monday evening. The initial report described a young hiker in and out of consciousness with a fractured ankle and going into convulsions, and "We treated it as life-threatening," said Victoria Weber, ground manager for the Sooke Search and Rescue; the injury turned out to be a sprained ankle. About 20 teenage hikers and two supervisors from Camp Miriam on Gabriola Island were on their second day of the 40-kilometre trail when a girl fell, and the alarm was raised by a hiker who trekked back to the West Coast Road and hitchhiked to a telephone; a Coast Guard auxiliary vessel could not get in because of the rocky shoreline and an emergency health services helicopter could not land on the sand. Some 30 members of the Sooke search-and-rescue and the volunteer fire department were out for up to 12 hours, the two-kilometre carry out took three hours, and two ambulance attendants were taken to hospital with mild hypothermia.
Details
| Headline | “Rescuers battle conditions to reach hiker” |
|---|---|
| Publication | Times Colonist |
| Date | 9 July 1997 |
| Page | 3 |
| Byline | Kim Westad, Times Colonist staff |
| Era | Sooke SAR era |
| Document type | news report |
| Source | ProQuest Times Colonist archive (BC ELN) |
| Accessed | 2026-07-15 |
| Licensing | ref-only |
| Record confidence | confirmed |
Archivist's note
This article is one of the pillars of the pre-2003 record: it shows an organized "Sooke Search and Rescue" with a named ground manager operating alongside the Sooke Volunteer Fire Department six years before the formation of Juan de Fuca Ground Search and Rescue, and it places Victoria Weber and Bill Meikle - both later described as founding members of JDF SAR in the 2012 Diamond Jubilee Medal coverage (SNM 2012-05-30) - on the same call. Note that the CRD's own history text (06_pre_formation/2008_crd_jdf_sar_page_with_history.md) says search and rescue was operated by the Sooke Volunteer Fire Department until 1983; here in 1997 the two are still working the same incident as separate bodies.
The clipping
