West Shore RCMP had a tense Victoria Day morning after a pipe bomb was discovered in a Victoria area apartment on Belmont Road.
Mounties discovered the pipe bomb around 9 a.m. Monday while they were assisting Victoria police with a firearms investigation in an apartment at 101 Belmont Rd. in Colwood, said Sgt. Max Fossum.
A 59-year-old man living in a ground floor apartment was arrested. He is expected to appear in court Tuesday and may face charges of possession of an explosive device.
"We had to call RCMP explosives disposal unit in Vancouver," said Fossum. "They flew up here and we contained the area."
Residents of seven apartments were evacuated. They were out of their suites for three hours while experts disposed of the pipe bomb. Fortunately, the man lived in an outside suite and not everybody had to be evacuated.
"It's kind of an old apartment building, so we were kind of concerned it was not concrete," said Fossum. "But what really helped us was the location of the man's apartment. We thought we would have to evacuate the whole building which would have been a lot more work."
It was a busy scene, said Fossum. Two officers accompanied the explosives experts. Six officers contained the building and the Colwood fire department was also at the scene.
"It was actually pretty big," he said.
The RCMP are continuing to work with Victoria police and will continue their investigation.
"There's always a risk," said Fossum. "Obviously the pipe bomb had been there for a while. If someone had touched it, the thing would have gone off. I don't know what kind of structural damage it would have caused. But I know we're definitely getting an expert report on that from the explosive disposal unit."
2 teens die in afterprom accident PRINCE GEORGE - Two teenagers have died after a vehicle plunged into a rural lake west of Prince George early Sunday morning.
It's believed the pair had been attending an outdoor party at Kwitzil Lake, more commonly known as Gravel Pit Lake, which may have been a prom after-party, according to reports on social media.
The bodies of one male and one female were pulled from the vehicle at around 4 p.m. Sunday, according to RCMP.
Officers say hundreds of people were attending a party in the area throughout the night.
Although the victims' names have not been released, the female has been identified on social media as Kendall Moore, a high school student from DP Todd Secondary, and the male as Craig Woods.
"RIP Kendall Moore, you were a sweet, smart, beautiful girl with a great life ahead of you. We will miss you," tweeted Caitlin.
"Rip Kendall Moore and craig woods only the good die young," Karli May Lafon wrote on Facebook. "You guys will be forever in our hearts" The high school posted the following tweet on Sunday: "Info coming in about the tragedy at gravel pit lake. Please everyone breathe deep and take care. School will have supports in place for Tue."
The B.C. Coroners Service is
investigating.
Port Alberni company leads in fighting California fires A Port Alberni company is playing a lead role in fighting destructive wildfires in California. Coulson Group of Companies has its C-130 Hercules, a slow-flying fixed-wing aircraft, on contract to U.S. Forest Services, owner Wayne Coulson said Sunday.
"We were the first aircraft to the Camp Pendleton fire on Wednesday," said Coulson, who stations firefighting aircraft at nearby San Bernadino.
"We've been working that fire right up until [Saturday]," he said.
The plane was then diverted to a fire beside the San Diego freeway "and we dumped a few loads on that," said Coulson.
"We're right in the heat of the battle."
Coulson keeps his aircraft in San Bernardino because it's within 40-minutes flying time to three large forests in southern California. He's got a 10-year contract with the USFS.
"That's our game right now," said Coulson, who a few years ago had the iconic Hawaii Mars working California wildfires.
Coulson's C-130 is the only turbo-prop aircraft in the fleet fighting California wildfires. The others are jets which lack the manoeuvrability of the C-130 in mountainous terrain.
"We can go slow and low in the mountains," Coulson said. "The C-130 is a tactical aircraft - that's what it's designed to do."
That Second World War-vintage Hawaii Mars, the largest waterbomber in the world, is now retired from firefighting and parked alongside the Philippine Mars at Coulson's base on Sproat
Lake near Port Alberni. Talks are in the final stages to find new homes, perhaps in museums, for the old water bombers. They began as troop carriers for the U.S. Navy, then were converted into water bombers and owned by a consortium of forest companies in B.C. Coulson bought them in 2007 and set the aircraft to work in B.C. and several American states.
Contracts have been hard to secure of late because many jurisdictions are hiring newer, more efficient water bombers.
Pamela Anderson reveals she was assaulted while growing up in Ladysmith Pamela Anderson says she was sexually assaulted several times while growing up on Vancouver Island.
The 46-year-old actor, who was born in Ladysmith, revealed her painful past during an emotional speech in Cannes, France.
She was speaking at the launch of the Pamela Anderson Foundation, dedicated to boosting human rights, helping animals and the environment. At a yacht reception to inaugurate the charity, the actress went into detail about sexual assaults she says she endured from a young age.
"At the risk of overexposing myself, again. Possibly being inappropriate, again. I thought I might share with you events that in surviving drove me to this point, right now.
"I did not have an easy childhood. Despite loving parents, I was molested from age 6 to 10 by my female babysitter. I went to a friend's boyfriend's house and when she was busy, the boyfriend's older brother decided he would teach me backgammon,
which led into a back massage, which led into rape. My first heterosexual experience. He was 25 years old, I was 12," said Anderson, reading nervously from a sheet of paper.
The assaults didn't end there, she said: "My first boyfriend in Grade 9 decided it would be funny to gang-rape me with six of his friends. Needless to say, I had a hard time trusting humans and I just wanted off this Earth."
"My parents tried to keep me safe. But to me the world was not a safe place. My dad an alcoholic, my mom worked two jobs waitressing. My mom was always crying, dad didn't always come home, leaving us in tremendous pain and worry. I couldn't bear to give her any more disruptive information so I couldn't break her heart any more than it was breaking," she said.
"I kept these events to myself." She credits animals and nature for giving her hope to live.
"My affinity with animals saved me, they came to me naturally. The trees spoke to me, I wasn't sure why I was alive, a burning question, a quest. My loyalty remains with the animal kingdom. I vowed to protect them and only them," she said. "I prayed to whales with my feet in the ocean, my only real friends until I had children. ... "Baywatch was a turning point for me. Reluctantly famous (in over 150 countries) I tried to make sense of my place on Earth. I started to realize - while being interviewed endlessly about silly things - that I had a voice."
The Pamela Anderson Foundation's mission is to provide funding for groups and individuals "on the front lines of human rights, animal rights and environmental protection," according to its mission statement..