It’s been a day of heartbreak and heroism in Tofino following the capsizing of a whale watching boat that took the lives of five passengers.
A potluck dinner took place in Tofino Monday night, bringing together a community that is united in grief, but also deeply grateful for the people who were in the right place at the right time to pull the survivors to safety.
Here’s what we know about Sunday’s disaster. At around 4 p.m., the MV Leviathan II–a 20-metre cruiser vessel operated by Jamie’s Whaling Station–capsized near Plover Reef, west of Vargas Island. Twenty-seven people were on board.
WATCH: Tragedy in Tofino
Members of the Ahousaht First Nation and the Coast Guard were able to rescue 21 people. Authorities confirmed five British nationals died. One person, an Australian national, remains missing.
The ship was no match for what appears to have been a rogue wave.
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READ MORE: Did a ‘rogue wave’ capsize a whale-watching boat off B.C. coast?
“We went to get three people in the water. One guy was clinging to the hull of the Leviathan so we picked him first. And then I heard voices a little ways away, there was two ladies, one hanging on to each other. One of them had a life-jacket, and the other one, I’m not sure if she did or not.”
“One of them was pregnant and one had a broken leg.”
The owner of Jamie’s Whaling Station doesn’t know why the boat would have flipped.
“This vessel has operated for 20 years with an absolutely perfect safety record,” Jamie Bray said at a news conference on Monday.
READ MORE: ‘You could hear people screaming’: Heroes recount rescuing survivors of whale-watching tragedy
Marc-André Poisson, director of investigation for the Transportation Safety Board, said they don’t know what caused the boat to sink but they’ll be collecting data, conducting interviews, looking at weather conditions, analyzing photos and the maintenance records of the vessel.
An RCMP dive supervisor told Global News divers hope to return to Plover Reef Tuesday to continue their search for the missing passenger.
-With files from Chris Gailus, Amy Judd, Yuliya Talmazan, Justin McElroy and the Canadian Press
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