Southeastern Slide Search Now Recovery Effort
Sunday, July 15, 2012 @ 7:42 PM
Kaslo, B.C. – The BC Coroners Service is confirming that one human body was found by searchers on the afternoon of July 15 at the site of Johnsons Landing mudslide.
The discovery came just hours after the Coroners Service moved to take a key role in the investigation, and the efforts to recover the four persons believed lost following the July 12 slide – Valentine Webber, his daughters Diana and Rachel and German visitor Petra Frehse.
Following advice from the incident command group at the site, the RCMP have made the decision to cease search and rescue and transition to a recovery operation that will be led by the Coroners Service. To actively assist with this phase, chief coroner Lisa Lapointe and disaster management specialist coroner Steve Fonseca travelled to the site of the disaster this afternoon.
The decision for the Coroners Service to become involved came after the unified command structure on site concluded reluctantly that there was no longer any hope that anyone who had been caught in the slide could be found alive. Frehse and the Webber family are believed to have been in the buildings that were in the direct path of the slide; they all remain missing.
The primary job of the Coroners Service on site will be to conduct an assessment to determine the possibility and feasibility of further recovery efforts.
Information gained during the investigation will also allow chief coroner Lapointe to determine as expeditiously as possible whether she should issue a declaration which would legally declare any of the four persons dead as she is entitled to do under the BC Coroners Act.
The Coroners Service will also begin efforts immediately to confirm identification of the body found on Sunday. The body recovered was that of a male.
Comments
The story says a body was found but that Frehse and the Webber family all remain missing.
Was there 5 people missing or only 4 as originally reported?
“…. the Coroners Service moved to take a key role in the investigation, and the efforts to recover the four persons BELIEVED lost following the July 12 slide â Valentine Webber, his daughters Diana and Rachel and German visitor Petra Frehse.”
“….. one human body was found by searchers on the afternoon of July 15”
“The Coroners Service will also begin efforts immediately to confirm identification of the body found on Sunday.”
Those are all quotations from the above report.
Until there is positive proof, we do not know whether some or all of the missing people were hit by the slide and are still burried under it.
The idenitifcation of the male body may be able to verify that it is Webber. It could be that it is not (although it seems unlikely) and someone else who has not been reported missing.
This is why the coroner is heading the process from here on in.
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