Reporter (R): Do you think those kids are in the woods?
SAR leader, Amy Hansen (AH): From everything I've seen, yes.
We got the first call shortly after 11
on Friday morning, on the 2nd, that
there were two children lost up here in
Lansdowne. We just deployed the
team and got here as fast as we could.
R: And when you got that first call did
anything stand out about that first call
as unique or unusual or- -
AH: - - it's not
common to have two lost subjects in that
kind of scenario— with kids like that—
it's not common to have the two. It's not
uncommon if a pair of hikers are overdue
or something like that, but with kids it
is a little uncommon to have two gone
missing.
R: Have you found anything?
AH: The only thing that we had were the boot prints. We still cannot 100%
say that they belong to the children but
that was pretty much the only thing that
we had.
R: You think they're in the woods?
AH: I have not been told anything to lead me to any other conclusion at this point.
R: Why can't you find them?
AH: They're small. They'd be hiding. They would have crawled underneath something, probably, when they got tired…they could have gone further than what we searched.
There are all kinds of scenarios, unfortunately.
(AH speaking, pointing out part of the search area): …so we're on Lansdowne Road. It was one of the areas that was searched extensively, as you can tell from
the flagging tape in the woods.
When teams are tasked, they get a bearing or a waypoint—or both— for where they are to start. So they come down into the woods and they'll tie a ribbon so they know
where their start point is. And then they
start on their compass bearing into the
woods.
As you can see: you can see another
flag. So this is where they were going
straight into the woods. So they're
following their bearing, putting their
flag down and searching at the same time,
coming up through all of this stuff.
R: How much of this is down because of Fiona? (The reporter is referring to Hurricane Fiona that hit parts of Nova Scotia hard in 2022).
AH: A lot of this is down because of Fiona, and some of it could have come down after
the fact. But the vast majority of it was
probably from Fiona.
(AH continuing on with describing the technical side of searching) : …so grid searching comes in different
types. We have type one, type two, and
type three. A type one is fairly open, so
if we're looking more for signs of
travel —or, say larger objects—if we
know they have backpack or something
like that, we can space people out, you
know, 10 - 20 m apart, especially if we
think somebody's going to be responsive.
If they're going to talk to us, (if)
they're calling to us, we'll do open.
We were doing closed grid, or type two, so
teams were very close together. Because
we were expecting children to be hiding.
A lot of children that age range will
hide.
So if we're 20 m apart in some of
these woods you can't see 2 feet away
from you. There would be places
where teams would be almost able to
touch their fingertips together and they
couldn't actually see each other through
the bushes, it's that thick in places.
R: So how does this compare to what your
teams have been dealing with? (Referring to the wooded area where this interview was taking place).
AH: This is actually fairly mild compared to some of the areas.
R: Mild? It looks like such a mess.
AH: It does look like a mess, and you got the thorn bushes and the dead falls. But
there are places that are actually a lot
worse. But there are places that are a
little bit better as well.
R: But what would be worse?
AH: A lot more deadfall. You can
get places where it's just deadfall on
top of deadfall on top of deadfall, and
you literally have to crawl underneath
of it or climb over top of it.
R: You were also saying, though, to the
general public: ‘don't come help us’. Why
did you say that?
AH: We don't want the general public in the
area because we use a lot of very
specialized assets like canines that are
looking for the freshest human scent
they can find. So if we have somebody
from the public go through an area, and
we don't know—but we were deliberately
waiting to send a canine into that area—
that canine could get on the track from
that person. Then we've just wasted
that resource because once that dog's
probably done its track, they're probably
exhausted and can't go out and do
anything else.
And same with drones. If we're flying a drone over the area and
we get a heat signature from somebody in
an area and we can't identify who or
what it is, then we have to send G-SAR
resources in or police resources to
confirm who that is. And in the same
breath, it all —a lot of it— comes down to
training. Our people are trained to
look for the little things: the
footprints, the pieces of clothing that
are discarded, the broken branches, spots
where somebody might have crawled in
underneath something and had a nap or
something like that. So they're very
‘clue sensitive’, is what we call it. They're clue finders. We're not just looking for the two children. We're looking for all the evidence of them going through the area, which is a big part of what we do.
When the boot print was found, we told the team just to send us the coordinates. We got a picture: *yeah it looks like a children's
rubber boot print*, which is what we were
looking for.
(We) conversed with the incident commander: *yeah we're going to send*. We sent an RCMP K9 in first, then we sent
human tracking teams: man
trackers. We have some members that
have been trained to do tracking
themselves. We sent them in and we did
some grid searching in the area to see,
just to follow up. Then the RCMP
forensics unit went in and actually did
a cast of the boot print.
We did investigate a few wells and mine shafts. The teams came across them in the woods. They would look in them as best they could. There was one mine shaft we
actually ended up flying a drone into (it) to
see if there was any sign of anything
going in there— because it wasn't
safe to send people in. There was no
sign of any disturbance or anything
inside the mineshaft.
I know they're still doing (an) investigation. Anytime a tip comes in they follow right up on it.
R: So do you feel it's been searched as well as it can be searched?
AH: What has been searched has been searched very well. It's very extensive with over 12,000 hours put in on the search. It's pretty much unheard of in this province.
All searches are hard unless we have a
good ending, obviously, but some hit
closer to home than others do. There were
members that couldn't bring themselves
to call the names, but other people on
the team were, so it wasn't impeding the
search effort. Because of personal
reasons they couldn't actually
physically call for the names themselves.
R: They just couldn't say the words.
AH: They couldn't get it out, no, for whatever reason they had. And there were people coming to the end of it that —whether it was physically they were just exhausted or mentally exhausted— that couldn't return to the search area as well. So we saw a little bit lower numbers on some of the revisit searches that we did with some of the teams for that first weekend.
R: The search was scaled back on May 7th.
What were you told when you got that
call? (Revisit call to return to the search.) Like— why were you going back?
AH: It was actually a conversation. I was
meeting with Major Crimes (Unit) on a regular basis, going through the paperwork from the search and showing them what was covered and what wasn't covered. It
was actually a conversation had between
us that: *yeah there's some areas that we
would like to go in and get covered off better*, or new areas that we said
*well there's a possibility*. So we want to
just go search those areas as well.
It's not uncommon for us to go back to a
search if we haven't found something.
R: What prompted, then, the second weekend search?
AH: Basically the same thing—just
more areas that we really wanted to see
get covered and just expand out on what
we had done.
R: So just to be clear: it was
not as a result of new information?
AH: It was not, no.
R: I think it gave some people
in the public hope - -
AH: - -yes- -
R: - - you know, like, *oh
maybe they found something there in that
area they're looking*. It wasn't that.
AH: It was not. It was just that we wanted to extend out our search area and cover off areas.
Most of these people, they're all
volunteers, they just want to find the
kids and bring them home. So they're more
than willing to keep coming back and
keep searching. Unfortunately, at this
point, unless something comes up we're
probably not going to be back. But that
being said, somebody could find something
that brings us back. Children just bring
out the best in people. When we're in a
situation like this everybody just wants
to come and do everything they can.
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