Searchers to use underwater drones to find man missing in snowmobile accident

A search and rescue team in Kangiqsujuaq is bringing in an underwater drone to help find a person believed to have fallen through a large crack in the ice on Wakeham Bay several days ago.

A hunter returning from his camp came upon the scene on the evening of June 8, said Kangiqsujuaq’s town manager Naalak Mifsud.

Mifsud said the hunter was following the six-metre-wide crack in the ice when he noticed a “strange thing floating” in its depths.

The hunter immediately went to town to alert the fire chief, then returned to the scene with two other men. They saw snowmobile tracks leading straight into the crack.

Belongings such as a backpack, life-jacket and a pack of cigarettes were floating in the water. That’s when the hunter found a woman’s body floating as well, said Mifsud.

The hunter was able to recover the body and brought it back to town by sled.

The next morning, Mifsud and a search crew returned to the area to search for a second person, a man who had been reported missing in connection with the incident.

“We couldn’t [find the missing man],” Mifsud said. “But we managed to pull the Ski-Doo from over 200 feet deep.”

They recovered the snowmobile by breaking ice to enlarge the crack, then going by boat into the water to drop an anchor. The team sailed for two hours trying to hook onto anything that might be sitting at the bottom of the bay.

Eventually, the anchor caught something heavy.

“We started to pull it to the surface, but [the rope] broke,” Mifsud said, adding the searchers were able to pull the snowmobile up with a thicker rope and second line.

A diver also attempted an underwater search but couldn’t go deeper than nine metres due to water pressure.

The team returned to the site Tuesday to search again by boat.

“They’re going to make a hole every few metres to create a search pattern, and try to hook a body from the bottom of the sea,” Mifsud said.

The community is to receive two underwater drones Tuesday evening that can reach as deep as about 90 metres underwater, supplied from Puvirnituq by the Kativik Regional Government.

Authorities have not released the names of the woman and the missing man.