Search and Rescue Efforts
Assuming an aircraft had crashed, within about 15 minutes, 10 RCMP officers arrived at the scene. Concerned for survivors, the RCMP detachment contacted the Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) in Halifax to advise them of the situation, and ask if any aircraft were missing. Before any attempt at rescue could be made, the object started to sink and disappeared from view.
A rescue mission was quickly assembled. Within half an hour of the crash, local fishing boats went out to the crash site in the waters of the Gulf of Maine off Shag Harbour to look for survivors. No survivors, bodies or debris were taken, either by the fishermen or by a Canadian Coast Guard search and rescue cutter, which arrived about an hour later from nearby Clark's Harbour.
By the next morning, RCC Halifax had determined that no aircraft were missing. While still tasked with the search, the captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter received a radio message from RCC Halifax that all commercial, private and military aircraft were accounted for along the eastern seaboard, in both Atlantic Canada and New England.
The same morning, RCC Halifax also sent a priority telex to the "Air Desk" at Royal Canadian Air Force headquarters in Ottawa, which handled all civilian and military UFO sightings, informing them of the crash and that all conventional explanations such as aircraft, flares, etc. had been dismissed. Therefore this was labeled a "UFO Report." The head of the Air Desk then sent another priority telex to the Royal Canadian Navy headquarters concerning the "UFO Report" and recommended an underwater search be mounted. The RCN in turn sent another priority telex tasking Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic with carrying out the search.
Two days after the incident had been observed, a detachment of RCN divers from Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic was assembled and for the next three days they combed the seafloor of the Gulf of Maine off Shag Harbor looking for an object. The final report said no trace of an object was found.
Read more about this topic: Shag Harbour UFO Incident
Famous quotes containing the words search, rescue and/or efforts:
“So often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,—at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body; and ... if a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for it ... I’ll go to the world’s end with him:MBut I hate disputes.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The literal alternatives to [abortion] are suicide, motherhood, and, some would add, madness. Consequently, there is some confusion, discomfort, and cynicism greeting efforts to “find” or “emphasize” or “identify” alternatives to abortion.”
—Connie J. Downey (b. 1934)