Shuswap boats not up to regulations

Photo by Shuswap News

On July 2nd a speedboat crashed into a houseboat on Shuswap Lake, killing 53-year-old Ken Brown. Police found more than 27 beer and cooler cans inside the speedboat. At the end of the very same month, a 26 year-old Alberta man drowned in the same lake when he fell off his boat, allegedly after hitting his head on the boat’s waterslide.

How sad it is when it takes tragedies like these to make authorities aware of the urgent need to take action. However, with few staff members and tight budgets, it is difficult for the RCMP to spread their resources in yet one more direction. But they are now clamping down on boaters who don’t abide by safety regulations.

In around-the-clock patrols recently, it was discovered that out of 246 boats checked, only four were completely compliant with current safety rules. That’s only slightly more than 1.5%! Nearly $20,000 in violation tickets were issued and 87 boats were towed to shore for safety deficiencies.

“The cat’s out of the bag that we have a problem,” said local resident and government member, Ted Bacigalupo. “The results of the patrol paint a sad picture and should be a wake-up call to officials. The fact that interior bodies of water have been neglected by senior jurisdictions is now clearly obvious.”

“It’s kind of a zoo out there,” said Corporal Henry Proce of the Lumby RCMP detachment which patrolled the X-shaped lake system northeast of Kamloops.

Corporal Mike Draper of the Chase detachment, which is the closest to the popular lake basin shared by both Shuswap and Mara Lakes, says he is encouraging his members to spend more time on the lake. “It looks as if staff will have to do the patrolling on their days off for overtime pay. “But we’ll get them out there as much as possible,” he said.

Nearly every member of the Chase detachment is now fully licensed to operate a water vehicle, in comparison to last spring when only a couple of officers were able to take boats onto the lake. Corporal Draper said that they have been working with Transport Canada to get the message out about boaters needing to be compliant with boat-safety regulations.

Last week at an advisory meeting, officials from all levels of government met to discuss how to deal with marine safety and there is now an awareness and determination to begin finding solutions. Later this year, Transport Canada will introduce tougher new requirements for operator-competency tests for pleasure crafts. Up until now, the test consisted of only a simple multiple-choice questionnaire. Boat operators, be prepared for a stiffer test and more patrols on British Columbia lakes.

Every year in Canada nearly 200 people die in accidents on the water and another 6,000 are injured.