Alberta pilot wants answers after slow response to plane crash

An Alberta pilot wants answers to what he describes as a botched rescue after a plane crashed into Cooking Lake on Tuesday.

"The lake is not that big," said Jim Meyer, a pilot who lives nearby and flies planes out of Cooking Lake Airport, southeast of Edmonton .

"He crashed about at the middle of the lake, which would be about a mile from the shore," Meyer said. "To take four and a half hours to get to an airplane a mile away, I think is ridiculous. And an explanation should be given as to why and what is going to be done if something happens in the future."

Meyer first learned of the crash at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. He said the Strathcona County Rescue Team showed up with its airboat, much like the ones used in swamps with a big propeller on back, at about 10:30.

They initially planned to launch the airboat from the airport near the lake, but that changed, he said.

"Somebody decided that that wasn't the best place to do it, so they left and went a few miles over and tried to launch it on the shore of the lake," Meyer said.

After waiting until 12:30 p.m. without hearing anything, he drove over to have a look.

On the water more than four hours

"I saw that they had the airboat stuck in the mud. So I went home and at 1 p.m. I was launching my canoe on the side of the lake. And I canoed out to the airplane, and I was there in about 40 minutes."

Meyer gave the pilot some water and waited with him for the rescue crew to arrive.

"The airboat eventually came out on the water and came over and picked us up," he said. "And it was 2:15 when they got the pilot back to the shore, to the ambulance. So, basically, he had been out on his airplane, and out on the water, for four and a half hours after he crashed."

But the fire chief and director of emergency services for Strathcona County defended the crew's approach to the rescue.

Iain Bushell said it was challenging, given the low water. While the airboat is designed for such conditions, getting through the mud to reach the water proved difficult, he said.

Bushell described the airboat as the kind used in "an everglade swamp" in Florida.

'We actually had to get to the water'

"It does not have any propeller that goes down into the water, it just has a big engine on the back and a big propeller on the back and top of the boat," he said. "It operates very well in about two inches of water but we actually had to get to the water."

Bushell said the fact that rescuers were in contact with the crashed pilot also played a role in their approach.

"We were talking to him via cellphone and we recognized that he had minor injuries," he said. "And that there was not, I don't want to say that there wasn't any urgency to rescue him, but he certainly wasn't in critical condition. So because of that, the team was making some calculated decisions and doing some risk management about how we would get to the gentleman."

Had the situation been worse they would have called in Canadian Military Search and Rescue, Bushell said.

The rescue crew used the airboat and an inflatable rescue boat.

"That gentleman that got out there in a canoe needed us to rescue him to bring him back again, so he could not get back to shore."

Meyer denied that, and said he could have made it back to shore in his canoe with the crashed pilot, if necessary.

Boat too big for the lake

He said he doesn't believe members of the rescue crew are responsible for the delayed response. But he thinks the rescue boat is too big and heavy for Cooking Lake.

"I think whoever was giving the orders higher up — where to put their boat and stuff like that, should explain this and maybe they should address the equipment that they have," Meyer said. "I personally don't think the equipment they have is satisfactory to get out on that lake."

Meyer said the delay took a toll on the 76-year-old pilot who crashed.

"When I got there, he asked if he could get into the canoe because he had had his feet in the water for almost four hours and they were a little bit pruney," he said. "I think he was still in a little bit of shock possibly. He had a pretty beat up eye, his eye was almost swollen shut and he was sore."

Meyer called on the county to make changes.

Bushell said a review of the rescue will be conducted, to determine if anything should have been done differently.

"But I would say this is certainly a rare event and we are relatively well prepared," he said.