Manitoba Dive Team Searches Okanagan Lake for Missing Paddleboarder

For Kyle Yrjola’s family, the search for answers on Okanagan Lake now reaches across the Prairies.

Yrjola has been missing since a paddleboarding incident on the lake Sept. 22. His female companion was rescued, but he was not found. A four-person team from Manitoba’s Hutterian Emergency Aquatic Response Team, known as HEART, has travelled to Kelowna with specialized underwater search and recovery equipment to assist his family.

A search limited by depth

Local search and rescue crews used sonar, K9 units, drones and other water-based search techniques, but were unable to locate Yrjola.

The limits of underwater search in deep or fast-moving water have also shaped other Manitoba recovery efforts, including The Canada Report’s coverage of the search for two boys missing in Nutimik Lake rapids. In this case, the lake’s depth again constrained what local crews could do before specialized equipment was requested.

Central Okanagan Search and Rescue said the lake’s depth restricted the underwater work it could undertake without specialized towed sonar equipment. The organization provided the information it gathered to police and requested the RCMP’s National Underwater Recovery Team continue the search.

That limitation is where HEART’s equipment is intended to make a difference.

According to Castanet, HEART is based in Morris, Man., and provides specialized underwater search and recovery services across Western Canada and B.C. The team’s arrival has brought fresh support to a family enduring a long and painful wait.

“Three weeks is a long time to be waiting for answers,” an update on a GoFundMe for Yrjola’s loved ones said. “While the uncertainty has been incredibly difficult, the kindness and generosity of people like the HEART team remind us just how much good there is in this world.”

KelownaNow reported the fundraiser had raised more than $6,000 at the time of reporting.

Sonar first, divers later

HEART team leader Paul Maendel told Castanet that sonar imaging is central to the group’s work, particularly where deep water makes diving impractical and potentially dangerous.

“You don’t think of Hutterite divers, but our colony is a bit different there because we have all the water opportunities and our gravel pits,” Maendel said.

According to Castanet, HEART uses a towed sonar unit to scan lake and river bottoms, then deploys a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, equipped with cameras, sonar and a manipulator arm when the team identifies an object requiring a closer look.

Maendel said the team’s work has shifted heavily toward sonar imaging because it is ineffective to send divers down without a clear place to search.

“The only time we have to put a diver down is if we image a body say in a river where there’s no visibility,” he said. In those conditions, he said, the ROV can help locate a person before a diver follows its tether for a hands-on recovery.

A mission rooted in closure

For Maendel, the technical work is tied to a more personal purpose: helping families who do not know where their loved one is.

“It’s about humanitarian helping out and relieving the suffering of families,” he told Castanet. “The victims done suffering. There’s nothing we can do for the victim other than bring them back, and it’s vitally important for the family to know where their loved one is.”

As the search continues, Yrjola’s case has drawn together local rescuers, police and a volunteer team that crossed provincial lines with equipment designed for the kind of deep-water search Okanagan Lake demands.

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