GPS locators should be mandatory

The successful but unnecessarily protracted rescue this week near Coral Harbour highlights an ongoing problem.

Every year people get lost in the North, even Canadian Rangers and, this year, there was a helicopter lost in Nunavik.

Some who might otherwise survive die before they are found. Search and rescue costs millions of dollars annually, and entire communities send out search parties, often risking more lives.

The remedy is for everyone traveling away from communities, without exception, to carry an emergency locator transmitter or a GPS tracker. I knew a pilot who picked up an ELT signal when flying across the Atlantic decades ago.

To pinpoint the location, he got another aircraft to get a fix, and the people were picked up from a crash site on the Greenland icecap just four hours after they went down. Problem solved!

Colin Alexander
Ottawa


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