Family calls on American sonar experts for missing kayaker search in B.C. lake
Global News
The family is now pinning their hopes on Gene and Sandy Ralston, an American couple who specializes in recovering drowned victims using side scan sonar equipment.
The grief-stricken family of a kayaker who went missing on Kalamalka Lake near Vernon, B.C., and is now presumed drowned, is desperately seeking closure and have cast their gaze south of the border to meet that aim.
It’s been a week and a half since Eli Buruca, 26, went missing while kayaking during a sudden storm. He’d been paddling with a group of friends and while they all made it back, he did not.
RCMP and search and rescue crews have yet to locate his body.
“We would like to find him and put him to rest, and as soon as possible, and start working on how we can heal from this — but also, you know, maintain his memory,” said Nidia Buruca Majano, Eli Buruca’s sister.
She and other members of the young man’s family arrived from Calgary soon after he went missing and have been looking for him since.
“We cannot sit and just nothing. So my family and I have been out every single day, morning, night looking for him with a drone or getting on a boat,” she said.
Vernon Search and Rescue had been scouring the lake, but RCMP stood the group down when the search remained fruitless.
The family is now pinning their hopes on Gene and Sandy Ralston, an American couple who specializes in recovering drowned victims using side-scan sonar equipment.