Just off the dauntingly-named Forbidden Plateau Road, into the mountains of east-central Vancouver Island, a small private airstrip is strewn with wreckage. Near the smoking wingless fuselage of a small aircraft, an engine undercarriage nacelle from a larger plane, as well as sundry debris, are strewn around. In the smaller aircraft, an injured person slumps, moving slightly, while several dozen others cry for help nearby and off in the distance.
It’s Friday, September 13, but this horror scene of a major air disaster is just a realistic construct—the climax of SAREX 2024.
The event is a national test of interoperability among 110 search and rescue (SAR) crewmembers from the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), approximately 70 from the United States Navy (USN) and Coast Guard (USCG), as well as members of the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA).
Tasked out of 19 Wing Comox—a man SAR base 20 kilometres to the east, on the shore of the Salish Sea—the crews from SAR squadrons across the country spent five days in one of the most challenging environments in the world. The Joint Search and Rescue Centre (JRCC) in Victoria, the main SAR control hub for British Columbia and the Yukon, is responsible for an area of nearly a million square kilometres that includes hundreds of islands and craggy mountains, which drop into heavily forested fjords. The search region includes more than 27,000km of coastline and 560,000km2 of the unforgiving Pacific Ocean, extending up to 1,000 nautical miles offshore.
SAREX 2024, the first national exercise of its kind since 2015, was an opportunity for Canadian and American crews to cross-train, exchange best practices and hone skills that enable them to respond within minutes from a 24/7 standby posture.
On this morning, the call for help from the “crash site” came in at 10 am. Teams were quickly briefed on the mission, which involved SAR technicians being dropped from two RCAF Lockheed Martin CC-130 Hercules in several sticks. A low cloud ceiling necessitated static line jumps to ensure virtually immediate parachute opening. A USCG C-27 Leonardo Spartan twin-engine turboprop surveillance platform provided top cover, orbiting just below the clouds but often disappearing into them as the ceiling rose and fell.
Within minutes of landing, some within a few metres of the wreckage, the orange-suited SAR techs spread out to begin triaging victims, a process that required a 30-second initial assessment to determine priorities. That completed, they initially focused worked on the most serious cases while ensuring that other victims were wrapped in heat-retaining mylar wraps while they awaited evacuation to “higher-level care.”
The Hercules crews monitored the situation on the ground for several hours, before directing in a series of helicopters to begin airlifting the injured. RCAF assets included CH-149 Cormorants and CH-146 Griffons, one of them a distinctively-striped model from 424 “Tiger” Squadron, based at 8 Wing Trenton, Ont. The U.S. helicopters included a USN SH-60 Seahawk and a USCG MH-65 Dolphin.
At least one of the RCAF’s new fixed-wing SAR platforms, the CC-295 Kingfisher, a twin-turbo replacement for the similarly configured but now retired CC-115 Buffalo, participated in an early part of SAREX. Its role was limited because, while there are now six Kingfishers in Comox, they remain in test and evaluation four years after the first of 16 was delivered from the factory in Spain.
The Cormorants and Kingfishers at Comox are operated by 442 Transport and Rescue Squadron, commanded by LCol François Fasquelle. The Vancouver native, a Cormorant line pilot at the squadron from 2011 to 2016, who returned as commanding officer a little more than a year ago, said his crews have a history of working with not only their Alaskan counterparts, but also in Washington state.
“Once in a while, the search and rescue resource of Alaska will ask us to help out in their region and, vice versa, the Victoria search and rescue commander will ask the Alaska and Washington commands to help out within the Canadian boundaries,” he explained. “There is that cross-pollination and camaraderie to help out.”
Fasquelle said that while there were “some extremely good lessons learned” out of SAREX 2024, there were no surprises.
“The training benefits are what we expected. Now it’s a matter of putting things together, ensuring we apply what have learned for the betterment of the community.” Debriefing, however, was “not going to be overnight,” but likely a process stretching out for a few weeks.
Overall planning of SAREX 2024 fell to LCdr Wes Jones, a USCG officer now into his third and final year of flying Cormorants on exchange with 442 Squadron. He came to Comox after nine years of flying MH-65 Dolphins out of Kodiak, Alaska, and southwest Oregon.
Before SAREX got under way, Jones said it was his job “to design realistic and challenging scenarios” for the participants, using the “unique geography of the West Coast to test their ability to operate in different environments and conditions.”
Afterward, he explained that every aircraft that went out during the exercise had a unit instructor or flight engineer aboard. “They observed, evaluated and provided input on the narrative they were given. Most of these crews come from non-mountainous terrain; this is a unique and challenging environment to operate in.”
He echoed Fasquelle’s assessment of the SAR environment on the West Coast, telling Vertical, “I was lucky to start learning SAR in Oregon” and “super lucky to get Comox, where I’ve had the privilege of flying with some of the best search and rescue pilots and aircrews in the world. The training they give here is absolutely top notch.”
As Jones upgraded toward Cormorant aircraft commander, his training included learning inland mountain terrain through the internationally-renowned Topflight mountain flying school, based in Penticton, B.C. That involved flying at up to 10,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains and the Coastal ranges, as well as hundreds of kilometres inland, refining his flying skills under all kinds of demanding conditions.
“I also got to spend almost a month above the Arctic Circle in the winter, flying in negative 35 degrees Celsius,” Jones said.
442 Squadron crews fly hundreds of kilometres offshore for medical evacuations from fishing vessels, he added, as well as responding to aircraft crashes, searching for lost hikers, and doing medevacs from remote Rockies communities. “It’s a package that has everything!”
As command pilot in a Cormorant, he has also crossed the border to operate in U.S. waters. A couple of months earlier, his aircraft was asked by the JRCC in Victoria to respond to a pleasure boat sinking in heavy seas and high winds off the Washington coast. “When I showed up, the Dolphin from Port Angeles was finishing hoisting four of the five people and a dog from a life raft,” he said.
As for the missing fifth missing boater, a CC-130 overflew the search area, setting up Jones and his crew for a successful rescue with skills refined throughout the years as the RCAF and its personnel have responded to thousands of calls annually. It’s just what they do and, as SAREX 2024 showed, they do it extremely well.
