It often starts with a motorboat or a sailboat and a summer day.
Someone, a family, or friends are out on the water for some sun, a breeze and fresh air when their boat starts taking on water or their sail runs out of wind. Worried, occasionally disoriented, they call for help, usually to the coast guard via radio or – if they have a cell phone with service – to 9-1-1. However, when those calls come in, wherever they originate off the east coast, they are all routed to the same place.
In Halifax, the phone rings at the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre. Marc Ouellette answers.
Ouellette isn’t on the water anymore. It’s his job now to man the phones, a less adventurous sounding job that still packs in a substantial amount of adrenaline – especially this week.
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While summer is always the Canadian Coast Guard’s busiest season, rescues spike during the first and last weeks of July. Ouellette stepped away from the phone lines for a moment to describe what it’s like to handle a rescue from start to finish, behind the scenes.
“It’s never one person,” he says, “it’s definitely a team.”
Roughly five people at a time man the rescue centre’s operational hub during the busier months, working 12-hour shifts. Over the course of a year, they handle some 2,500 calls for help. As with most jobs, there are lulls in activity, but during peak summer – right now – Ouellette and his colleagues sometimes handle as many as 25 cases every day.
It isn’t as simple as dispatching an ambulance or a fire truck, he says.
“You don’t realize the complexity of the whole system until you really get involved with it,” Ouellette says. “It’s kind of like an onion.”
Cases involving lakes automatically involve the RCMP, while other incidents need helicopters or Parks Canada, conservation officials, or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The Rescue Coordination Centre’s jurisdiction spans roughly 4.7 million square kilometres with more than 29,000 kilometres of coastline. It stretches from the eastern half of Quebec up through the Atlantic provinces to the southern half of Baffin Island.
“You show up to work and you never know what you’re going to get on that given day,” Ouellette says.
But the entire room is designed to make sure people like Ouellette can move as quickly as a situation demands. It’s open concept, one big room with desks facing inward so everyone can see everyone else’s face.
“Information sharing is instantaneous,” he says.
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The phone rings. Ouellette answers.
If it’s not Ouellette answering, it’s one of his colleagues. Whoever isn’t answering the phone is listening in on the call. While they listen, they’re typing away: what one person types in immediately flashes on the other’s screens.
When they’ve gleaned enough information, they start making their calls.
They can call in zodiacs, small inflatable rescue boats, or medium-sized cutters, boats built for speed. Local police are notified, ambulances told where to go in case of medical issues. There are helicopters at the ready, Ouellette says, that can be tasked “before that first phone conversation is over.”
Once a request has been made, he says, the phones won’t stop ringing for that one individual case for 30 to 60 minutes at least.
“It’s exciting,” he says, “you get a little addicted to it after awhile.”
But as immediate as the information sharing at the rescue centre is, Ouellette notes that the actual response is not. It’s one thing that many people calling for help still don’t seem to get.
“We live in a world where people expect things to happen instantaneously,” he says.
“We see a lot of times if there’s an individual in trouble they expect a helicopter to be overhead within five minutes, which is not always reasonable.”
That’s why Ouellette cautions, especially now during summer’s peak, that people remember to be safe. Know the risks, he says, check the weather, make sure you’re carrying life jackets and an emergency beacon.