Good Samaritan offers boat to rescue 10 people from Ghost Lake

A group of boaters at Ghost Lake found themselves in distress after an unfortunate scenario last Saturday evening. Around 9:45 p.m., Cochrane RCMP and the Cochrane Fire Department received a call that a boat was sinking in Ghost Lake. There were 10 people varying between the ages of one and 53 who had been aboard before the boat was nearly submerged leaving them stranded in the frigid water. Keith Crone and his three colleagues could have been in Airdrie enjoying chicken wings after work that evening, but instead ended up at the head of the rescue alongside a Cochrane RCMP officer. Crone said his friends had wanted to have dinner but had offered to help him find his motorhome keys, which he had lost in the water two days earlier. "I said we better get going, it's getting late. We zipped out to Cochrane and grabbed the boat and then went and launched at the brand new boat launch," Crone said. They were only about 15 feet from the dock when they saw sirens and then an officer running towards them. "We were just about to start diving and looking for these keys and the RCMP car came out, Cst. (Sean) Gordon. He ran down the dock and said, 'We've got a 911 distress call, someone's in trouble on the lake. We heard kids screaming, people screaming and then the phone went dead.'" Crone didn't hesitate to offer his boat to the officer who was waiting for the search and rescue boat to arrive with an emergency services crew. "I said, 'We don't have time for that, get in here,'" Crone recalled. "I know that there's one really bad reef way down the lake so I said let's start there." "We went down the lake and sure enough, right where I suspected, there was the boat with just the nose of it poking up – the lights were still on. And then to the right of that, there were just people in the water everywhere, it was just like everywhere." "We got them to the dock then we turned them over to authorities. It was after midnight by the time it was all said and done," he said. "You can dramatize it all you want but they were in the water, we put them in the boat, we took them to the dock. There was like nine ambulances there, every volunteer from Banff to Stettler was there and they took over and they got it done." All 10 were successfully recovered from the water with the use of three boats. After being pulled from the lake, a 15-year-old girl had gone unresponsive and the RCMP member was able to successfully administer chest compressions and revive her. RCMP called Crone a Good Samaritan though Crone just chalks it up to good luck and being at the right place at the right time. "It just so happened that we were the only people on the lake with a boat and luckily had a full tank of fuel in the boat, so we could make it there and back. We weren't really even planning on going boating it was just a total coincidence that we were there," he said. "All it was was an unfortunate set of circumstances for a group of people out boating and they were just really lucky that they were able to get the 911 call off before their phone went in the water and the police were able to respond. It was a very unique set of circumstances that I guess they were very, very fortunate and we played a bit of a role in it. Cochrane RCMP estimated the boaters had been waiting in the water for rescue for about an hour.