A resourceful Canadian man who’d been missing in the wilderness for more than a week was rescued by helicopter Friday thanks to the “HELP” sign he’d scrawled on a large rock. Rescuers commended his ingenuity but said he was in poor health and might not have survived another day in the woods.
“He was literally slurping unclean pond water to stay hydrated,” Staff Sgt. Brad McKinnon of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told reporters Sunday. McKinnon said that in addition to being dehydrated, the man had injured his right leg and was hardly able to stand when rescued.
“The human drive to survive is a powerful thing,” McKinnon added.
The 39-year-old man, identified as Andrew Barber, had gone missing in the Cariboo region of British Columbia in late July, and he was first reported missing to the Williams Lake RCMP on July 31. The agency teamed up with Quesnel Search and Rescue to look for Barber, but the first few days of searching from the air and on the ground were unsuccessful. The area is big, wild, and remote, and McKinnon likened it to looking for a needle in a haystack.
The SAR team was finally able to narrow its search Friday, when an RCMP helicopter caught a glimpse of Barber’s truck on a forest service road. An observer in the helicopter then spotted a makeshift shelter nearby that Barber had made out of mud and sticks. It was leaning against a large rock with the word “HELP” written on it.
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Quesnel SAR president Bob Zimmerman told CBC News that the shelter and sign were in a boggy area near McLeese Lake and roughly 5 kilometers from where Barber’s truck had broken down. Zimmerman said Barber didn’t have any food on him, and that he’d been drinking untreated pond water but was still dehydrated. Barber had also stuffed his clothes with grass to try and add insulation.
“He was having a hard time standing,” Zimmerman explained. “I don’t know that he would have made it another 24 hours without us recovering him.”
After being flown out of the wilderness by helicopter, Barber was transported by ambulance to a hospital in Williams Lake. McKinnon said he has since been released and “is doing quite well.”
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