Andrew Barber knows he is lucky to be alive.
“It’s just a dramatic, just a string of events that can turn a simple walk across the field into a two-week adventure of survival,” he said.
On July 28, Barber, who recently moved from Ontario, went out near his Williams Lake, B.C., home to look for his dog, Nico, who had not been seen for three weeks.
While searching for Nico, one of Barber’s truck tires popped on a forest service road so he tried walking to find help as phone service in the area is spotty at best.
However, he became disoriented due to the heat and then lost his way back to his truck.
Andrew Barber says his dog, Nico, who has been missing for three weeks, is his best friend.
Provided to Global News
Barber, 39, said he ended up in a fight for his life.
“Heat stroke definitely became a big factor, you know, it and the bush all seems to look the same and you know, like I thought I was possibly maybe a kilometre or two kilometres through the bush to the nearest road, I knew I wasn’t very far from the Fraser River,” he said.
“But here in B.C., everything has got quite a distance between it.”
Barber came across a pond and even though he didn’t want to drink the water, he said it was so hot that he had no choice.
“And then it’s the turn of events where, you know, one day turns into two nights, turns into three days,” he said.
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“One to two days is extensive, but you know when you get to seven, eight, nine days without any water or food and nobody in sight, there’s no… there’s no calling for help.”
Barber had to remove his boots when they became packed with mud and he tried to walk out in his socks.
“But I did like a big 20-kilometre circle and I ended up right back at the same pond.”
He described it as a horror movie.
“It got to the point where I even, you know, I took the elastic out of my underwear to try and make a bow string to start a fire,” Barber said, hoping to draw attention to his location.
But as the days dragged on amid the unrelenting heat, Barber said he started to worry if anyone was going to find him.
He would see the search and rescue helicopters flying above but, despite his best efforts to draw attention to his location, they didn’t see him
“One thing I’ve always remembered is to shelter in place and stay put,” he said.
“It’s hard to, it would be much harder for people to find somebody stranded if they were continuously moving in the bush… but you can’t lose hope, you have to remember… that’s what kept me going was that there’s somebody, somebody has to be looking for me.”
At night, the heat gave way to biting cold, dropping temperatures that turned survival into a battle against the elements.
“You’re waking up shivering, I’m stuffing hay and grass in my pants to insulate,” he said.
“So, but when the sun comes, when the sun’s finally peeking out, you’re going out and laying in the sun, trying to warm up a little bit.”
On Aug. 8, nearly two weeks after he went missing, a glint of sunlight on his windshield caught a rescuer’s eye up in a helicopter.
“He was standing by a rock with a great big SOS written on it in mud,” Bob Zimmerman, manager of Quesnel Search and Rescue, told Global News.
“So, they went in and picked him up. He was in pretty weak condition. It’s not known if he would have made another 24 hours because all he’d survived on was water… pond water.”
Barber is now in the hospital on antibiotics, recovering from sunstroke, a dislocated toe and severe fatigue.
He praised Quesnel RCMP, Quesnel Search and Rescue, Williams Lake RCMP, PEPair, RCMP air support helicopters, B.C. Emergency Health Services and staff at Cariboo Memorial Hospital.
“It really makes you appreciate humanity,” Zimmerman said.
Barber said there were moments when he wanted to give up but hope kept him going.
“I was very fortunate to be found when I was found. I was definitely on my last hours, that’s for sure.”
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B.C. man survives 2 weeks in wilderness by drinking pond water: ‘A horror movie’
