Family rescued by helicopter after getting lost while hiking
The family was found safe around 1 a.m. Sunday
A family of hikers was rescued by helicopter from the Cochrane Lane Cliffs area north of Saint John early Sunday morning.
The group got lost after four of them went back into the forest to search for a family member who had gotten separated from them during their hike.
The fifth family member managed to make it out of the woods on his own, but the other four family members lost their way.
Welsford Volunteer Fire Department received the call to assist with the rescue around 5 p.m. Saturday. Fire Chief Dave McCready described the Cochrane Lane Cliffs area as "very rugged terrain, very wooded, very rocky."
"It's actually a world-class climbing site, so it's popular and there are special trails, marked trails, that lead climbers to their climbing sites," McCready said.
"But this party seemed to get off those trails."
The family was on the phone with RCMP, describing their location so firefighters could find them.
McCready said RCMP were able to roughly identify the family's location based on their cell signal.
Search & Rescue is a system of systems. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JRCCHalifax?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#JRCCHalifax</a> worked with <a href="https://twitter.com/RCMPNB?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RCMPNB</a> to rescue 5 lost hikers last night in the woods about 26 km North of St. John, NB. 1/2
—@JTFA_FOIAEleven firefighters spread out into the woods to search for the family, but they couldn't find them.
"There's so many lakes and so many streams that our search crews weren't meeting up with the party."
The fire department told the family to start a fire, so that they would be better able to find them.
"That gave us a bit of an idea [of where they were]. It was a bit difficult until the sun got in the right spot to see any smoke cause it's quite mountainous and there's a lot of valleys. And with the weather, that was keeping the smoke down."
It was getting dark, so the fire department recommended contacting ground search and rescue.
Helicopter deployed
The New Brunswick Emergency Measures Organization called the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) in Halifax, which deployed a helicopter to help with the search and rescue efforts.
Maj. Mark Morris, officer in charge of the JRCC, said they wanted to find the family quickly because temperatures were dropping.
"Temperatures were forecast to be about two degrees yesterday and they weren't very well-prepared in terms of their clothing and survival equipment," Morris said.
The family was found safe around 1 a.m. Sunday, hoisted into the air and brought to a nearby ambulance. They were not seriously injured.
The family's cellphone had just one per cent power left by the time the helicopter found them. McCready said the family was in good spirits and happy to be out of the woods.
"We could tell in their voices when the helicopter was flying overhead that they were very excited," McCready said.