CKNW News Staff | Email news tips to nwnews@cknw.com
7/13/2012
After three days of on-and-off searching in Johnsons Landing near Kaslo, there is still no sign of the four people believed to have been buried by a landslide.
Bill Macpherson with the Central Kootenay Regional District says upwards of 70 people are working on the operation after being help up by heavy rain in the morning, including spotters, security staff and searchers.
He says crews are focusing on the foundation of one house, whose top is somewhere else among the debris.
"They were conducting a grid search to try and pinpoint exactly where the lower portion of that house would be."
Valentine Webber, his grown daughters, Rachel and Diana, and German tourist Petra Frehse are all unaccounted for.
The search will continue until dark.
B.C.'s forest minister, meanwhile, has confirmed his department received a warning before the landslide happened.
Steve Thomson says in an e-mail the department received the message the morning of the slide, but it wasn't opened until after the damage was done.
NDP forests critic Norm MacDonald says government must be open with all information when it comes to disasters such as this.
He says the first priority is to find four missing people after three homes were flattened. And the second?
"Making sure that the government is completely open in terms of sharing with the public any information that it has so that we can look at what has taken place and see if there things that could have been done better."
A similar warning was made to the forests ministry a few days before a 2010 mudslide in Oliver, which destroyed five homes. Officials admitted then they did not act appropriately.
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