Maureen Parriott

Special to the Times-Chronicle

The first hint Lydia and Rob Street had that something unusual was afoot was the drone of low-circling aircraft late in the afternoon of Tuesday, Dec. 1.

The young couple, their two small children, and their family of horses, ponies, goats and chickens live on a hilly acreage partway between Bridesville and Rock Creek.

They couldn’t spot the planes through the surrounding forest, but as dusk deepened, Lydia was startled to look out her kitchen window and see lights approaching through a gap in the tree line.

“A plane was aiming at our house,” she said, “and then it just kept on circling.”

A rancher checking on cattle, maybe? A missing person search? Police? A news team?

Then they noticed vehicles, some with lights off, racing down a nearby road toward the highway.

Dark descended, and flares suddenly began showering down, turning night into day and freaking out their goats. Shortly after, they heard the “whump-whump-whump” of helicopter rotors.

“We felt like we were in the centre (of something), and we didn’t know why,” Rob said.

Followers of local and national news know they were witnessing the pursuit of a break-and-enter suspect by a determined RCMP member that ended with both of them trapped in a narrow ravine, wet and freezing, unable to climb out. The Grand Forks Search and Rescue team, other Mounties, good Samaritans, and ultimately, four airplanes and two helicopters from the Canadian Forces base in Comox were involved in extricating them.

But at the moment, no one in the neighbourhood had a clue about what was going on nearby.

Fortunately, Rob and Lydia, who moved from Surrey to “get out of the rain and have horses” a few years ago, are tech-savvy and community-minded. They realized during the 2016 Rock Creek fire that there was a need for community connectivity, so they created a webpage called the “West Boundary Community Chat.”

“It’s a mini-version of the Loop,” said Lydia. It shares information about highway conditions, job openings, livestock escapes, residents’ wellbeing, and anything else of interest to its roughly 200 members.

That evening, the group immediately starting texting back and forth, sharing what they could scrounge about the mysterious goings-on.

At first, Rob said, “We were just getting fragments of the story.” Then word trickled in about the attempted break and enter on Fish Lake Road, the chase, and the rescue in progress. They also learned about the apprehension and release of several other “persons of interest” in the alleged robbery attempt.

That gave rise to concern. What if other fugitives were roaming the bush?  Advice sling-shotted around the network. Secure your barns, outbuildings, and basements. Turn on outside lights and turn off indoor ones.  Somebody reported hearing a gunshot. Was it just a common-enough hunter? What about the kids? Put them in the basement to protect them from a potential crossfire, or keep them upstairs in case of a flare-caused fire?

“It was pretty wild. Unusual for here, where it’s slow and quiet normally, and all of a sudden planes and helicopters and flares and foot chases,” Rob remarked. “”It was like being back in the big city.”

“There’s a big difference between here and the big city, though,” Lydia rejoined. “Here all the neighbours were working together as a good, tight-knit group looking out for each other.”

She described people investigating when they heard their neighbours’ dogs barking, shining flashlights into dark recesses, monitoring each others’ roofs and fields for flare-caused fires, reaching out to isolated seniors, and even some legally-armed neighbours pledging security for those who weren’t.

Around 11:30 pm, five or six hours after the kerfuffle started, things calmed down. Lydia contacted RCMP the next day and was told there was “no current danger,” but was provided with no details.

Reflecting on the situation, Lydia and Rob wondered why there had been no notification on the Midway or Osoyoos RCMP Facebook pages during the incident informing the public about what was occurring.

They recalled a previous incident in which an armed man running from police escaped an auto accident on Highway 3 and headed cross-country in their direction. Fortunately, he was detained before he got close, but they only learned about it hours later, not in real time, so had no opportunity to be on alert.

“The lack of official word on anything is kind of alarming. You’re just left to speculate, and of course your mind wanders to the worst possible scenario,” Rob said.

However, realizing that official resources cannot always respond in a timely manner, the couple is gratified by how well the West Boundary Community Chat members step up to support each other.

Simply neighbors looking after neighbours in the time-honoured tradition of rural communities, they say, abetted by modern technology.