Victoria firefighter killed in kayak accident near Port Renfrew

The Victoria Fire Department and Vancouver Island's river kayaking fraternity were mourning the death of a colleague who drowned when his whitewater kayak became trapped under a rock. Fire Chief Doug Angrove confirmed that one of his members, Jeff Strang, was killed in an accident on Harris Creek the previous Thursday. Strang, 36, married and from Duncan, had joined the fire department in October 2005; a friend in the paddling community described him as "one of the safest and most experienced paddlers on the Island" who had "run the river about 50 times or so". The accident happened around 1:30 p.m. when three paddlers were in a section of the swollen creek lined by high cliffs; Strang went first, and taking a less-preferred channel he was sucked under a boulder and pinned while submerged. Fellow kayakers tried but were unable to pull him out in the torrent of water. Bill Meikle, Juan de Fuca search and rescue manager, said the area would have made a rescue "very difficult. The pressure of the water and the conditions there are extreme… It is basically a canyon. One side is straight up 300 feet." Rescue teams reached the scene around 5 p.m., but the treacherous location and diminishing light forced them to leave and return in the morning. By dawn on the Friday, members of Juan de Fuca, Cowichan/Duncan, Victoria and Nanaimo search and rescue organizations were at the scene; using ropes to scale down the cliff and work from ledges along the creek, they found the kayak, and fellow paddlers found the dead man around 1:30 p.m. a short way downstream.