Warnings have been issued against taking a shortcut from Rocky Point by walking across Port Moody inlet after two girls were recently pulled from the muck.
Last Saturday, Port Moody Fire Rescue was called out to the mud flats after two girls walked out when the tide was out and got stuck.
“Luckily, they called 9-1-1 and the crews reached them from Old Mill off of Sam Remo,” said PoMo fire chief Ron Coulson, “We realized they were in a precarious position.”
It took almost an hour for crews wearing special boots and carrying a spine board to extricate the teens.
“They were pretty muddy,” but unhurt, Coulson said.
However, it could have been worse, the mud is not sand but organic material that can suck people in like quicksand and put them in danger, especially if the tide comes in and the water becomes deep.
“We usually get a few, two or three rescues a year, which is two or three too many,” Coulson noted.
Fortunately, PoMo fire rescue has amassed a large cache of equipment to deal with these rescues and crews are trained in extricating people from the muck.
However, there is a concern that someone might cross the inlet after drinking at one of the breweries on Murray Street, and Coulson wants people to realize that such a walk would be extremely dangerous.
“Stay off the mud flats, even though they are inviting, they are not sand, they are organic material and extremely treacherous,” Coulson said.
The City of Port Moody put out a similar message to residents in a Tweet this week.
Please! Stay off the mud flats! Last weeked @PortMoodyFR was called to do another rescue on the mud flats. This training video shows the extreme difficulty of mudflat rescue. It's just an unnecessary risk #portmoody pic.twitter.com/2z51V4JGAz
— City of Port Moody (@CityofPoMo) April 4, 2019
