The coroner in the 2021 drowning of Montreal firefighter Pierre Lacroix hears about his frantic search after his boat capsized in the Racine rapids during a rescue attempt.
But Lieutenant Sylvain Dominique of the Montreal Fire Department said today that despite tremendous efforts from sea, land and air, rescuers did not see under the capsized Hammerhead ship in the first hours after the accident. I testified.
On October 17, 2021, Lacroix and three colleagues were trying to save two boaters in distress when the waves of the St. Lawrence River capsized a firefighter’s boat. His three other firefighters survived.
Dominic, who worked at the command post from the shore, told the inquest that the capsized fireboat was found within an hour of the accident, but was stuck at the bottom of the river and could not be turned over immediately.
He instructed the search team to ignore the boat and, instead, believed that if firefighters were trapped under the boat, they would likely already be dead, so they were forced to leave Lacroix in the open water. I ordered them to concentrate on the search.
It wasn’t until around 3:00 a.m., about seven and a half hours after the accident, that Montreal police underwater cameras confirmed that Lacroix’s body was secured under the overturned boat.
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