The fire department got the drowning call at 2:03 p.m., according to assistant fire Chief Greg Young.
Crews arrived at Barnet Marine Park at 2:10 p.m. but they had been dispatched without a boat.
Bobbi McBride, a Coquitlam resident who had been crabbing and taking photos by the beach, said firefighters had cut the lock on a boat-storage area and commandeered a small dingy when they realized how far out the man had capsized.
“As soon as they did that, they grabbed it and ran towards the shore and got into it, two of them did,” she said.
Two firefighters, initially without lifejackets, rowed out to the spot where the man had last been seen, but they were unable to locate him.
Two civilians had already jumped in to try and save him, but one turned back and the other had also been unable to find him.
“As far as the emergency teams, before they got there, he was gone,” McBride said.
The man’s body was pulled from the water by a Coast Guard hovercraft dive crew at 3:20 p.m.
Jurisdiction
Burnaby firefighters from Fire Hall 4 on Duthie Street used to train for marine rescues on the Burrard Inlet and take turns manning a fireboat stationed nearby in partnership with the Port Moody fire department.
The arrangement was part of the “Fire Boat Operating Agreement,” signed in 1991 by the cities of Vancouver, North Vancouver, Port Moody and Burnaby as well as the District of North Vancouver and Port Metro Vancouver.
It governed the deployment of five fireboats in the region and cost the City of Burnaby $75,000 a year, according fire Chief Joe Robertson.
“The training required just for the boat operator was really – it took a lot away from our other training,” he told the NOW.
When city council voted to leave the agreement in December 2012, a staff report stated: “Should Burnaby decide to terminate the marine fire-fighting agreement, the fire department has two smaller zodiac boats which may be deployed to respond to minor marine emergency calls.”
Case-by-case
Today, however, those boats are stationed at Fire Hall 1, near Deer Lake, and the fire department says Burrard Inlet is not within its jurisdiction.
“We now train just at Burnaby Lake and Deer Lake,” Robertson said.
He said the department decided focusing on the city’s inland waters was the most effective way to deploy its resources.
The department now only dispatches boats to calls on the Burrard Inlet to the north and the Fraser River to the south of the city on a case-by-case basis,
Robertson said he made the call not to send the boats Thursday afternoon.
“I was told that the Coast Guard and the fireboat were on route,” he said.
Without a boat, firefighters can attempt a land-based rescue with throw lines and life rings, according to Young, but the man had gone down too far off shore.
“When they got there, they did the best that they could to try and locate the person,” Young said.
Cornelia Naylor, reporter
604-444-3002
