HALIFAX – Inclement weather was the reason why the military could not immediately deploy an aircraft in the search for a missing 14-year-old boy in Labrador whose body was later found on a frozen sea, the Canadian Forces said Friday.
Rear Admiral Dave Gardam, the commander of Joint Task Force Atlantic, said the weather was unsuitable when the military first received a call Monday morning to help find Burton Winters, who was reported missing Sunday evening from the remote community of Makkovik.
“Given the weather conditions, which were below limits for safe operations of an aircraft, our aircraft were not able to operate in that environment,” Gardam told a news conference Friday in Halifax.
Gardam said poor visibility and a low ceiling prevented the military from dispatching a chopper from its base in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L., sooner.
“We have to manage a very large area, and it’s a balancing act on how you manage weather, resources, aircraft availability, crew rest,” Gardam said.
“It is very much like a ballet, and it has to be managed that way.”
Federal and provincial politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador have raised questions about why it took military aircraft nearly two days to join the search for Winters.
The chief of the defence staff ordered an investigation into the military’s response to the search on Thursday.
Newfoundland MP Jack Harris said the military’s explanation on Friday doesn’t provide all the answers he wants.
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“It’s clearly very preliminary,” he said from St. John’s, N.L.
“The timeline is very sketchy and raises more questions or as many questions as it answers in terms of why a helicopter or assets of the Canadian Forces weren’t available more quickly. I’m not satisfied that we know the answer to that question yet and we want more information. And we want a fuller report and a fuller investigation.”
Labrador’s Inuit government issued a statement Friday, saying Winters’s death was a tragedy that could have been prevented.
“We truly believe that Burton would still be with us today if the search and rescue response time had been quicker,” Nunatsiavut president Jim Lyall said.
“We understand the calls for search and rescue were made shortly after the boy went missing, but the air support out of Gander and Goose Bay were not available. That is totally unacceptable.”
The province’s fire and emergency services first contacted the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre on Monday at about 9 a.m., according to a chronology of the search effort provided by the military after its news conference.
The document also says fire and emergency services were “advised that no aircraft are serviceable to assist in search and weather unsuitable.”
About three hours later, a helicopter from a private company based in Happy Valley-Goose Bay arrived on the scene to assist in the search for Winters.
The next day around 9:30 a.m., the RCMP changed the status of the search to a recovery effort based on a suspicion that the boy and the snowmobile fell through the ice, the chronology says.
But around 3:30 p.m., the snowmobile was found on an ice floe, and the military was called again for help about an hour later. At about 7:30 p.m., the chronology says the military deployed a CH-146 Griffon helicopter from Happy Valley-Goose Bay. It arrived about an hour later.
Winters was found dead Wednesday on the frozen Labrador Sea, about 19 kilometres from his snowmobile and seven kilometres from shore.
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