Senior survives bush ordeal

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Search and rescue personnel put 86-year-old Joe Kuz into an ambulance that took him to hospital in Ste. Anne. He was dehydrated and cold, but otherwise fine.

STE. ANNE -- An 86-year-old man on his annual fall rock hunt spent four nights in the bush, endured single-digit temperatures and lived to tell about it -- to the surprise of everyone.

"I was not very optimistic," said Joe Kuz's niece, Pat Klaprat, outside the hospital in Ste. Anne, where her uncle was resting. "I assumed he was dead."

Kuz was dehydrated and cold but otherwise fine after being found about 9:30 a.m. west of Hadashville lying down among spruce trees and covered in moss, conserving his energy.

"He's one tough cookie," said his nephew, Myron Lamaga, who had taken part in the search and on Monday was revelling in the rescue.

"It is a good-news story," he said, explaining how his uncle, who had nothing to eat or drink for days, was found.

"He was by a clearing with water in it," Lamaga said.

Kuz heard one of the all-terrain vehicles that was searching for him get stuck and then the motor was turned off.

"He hollered and that's it," Lamaga said.

Kuz told his niece about his rescuer, an RCMP veteran.

"(My uncle) kind of had his arm and wouldn't let go," Klaprat said. "He said 'I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty'... He was incredibly cold."

At the hospital, Kuz said he wasn't prepared for interviews. He got to warm up with a bath and was receiving plenty of fluids and care.

"He said he's not going anymore into the swamp," Lamaga said. "He's staying to the roads."

The stocky bachelor, who lives in a seniors building in Winnipeg, had been dropped off by a 90-year-old friend near his nephew's cabin west of Hadashville and north of the Trans-Canada Highway on Thursday.

"I didn't find out till the next day," said Lamaga, whose cabin his uncle was heading for. "I thought it was a terrible idea."

He said his uncle, who was a miner and worked in construction, was looking for rocks that might contain diamonds.

Kuz had found a big boulder a few years ago and, certain it was a meteorite, persuaded university scientists to travel to Hadashville to check it out.

It wasn't a meteorite, but that didn't stop Kuz from conducting his fall pilgrimage to hunt for rocks.

His nephew said Kuz was dropped off some distance from the path to the cabin, but was headed in the right direction.

"He didn't get disoriented... He got tired. If he'd gone another third of a mile, he'd have got in the cabin."

Lamaga was relieved his uncle, who turns 87 next month, was found before the long weekend ended and volunteers searching for him had to return to work.

"They were slowing down," Lamaga said.

The search party of about 40 volunteers and professionals on Sunday had dwindled to 15 by Monday and authorities had told them to brace themselves for the worst.

Lamaga drove in an amphibious, tracked all-terrain vehicle looking down into the water-filled ditches in case his uncle had fallen.

His sister was already trying to figure out how she'd tell their mother and aunt the bad news about their brother.

"I expected to tell them they found him and he passed away," Klaprat said. "I thought he had a heart attack or a broken leg."

"How could someone disappear without a trace?" she asked.

"You get other crazy ideas: Did he wander off the road or get picked up? Did he even get dropped off?"

Spending 96 hours outdoors in swampy, rain-soaked terrain at this time of year would be a challenge for anyone.

"(Manitoba) Conservation told me the prognosis doesn't look so good," she said of the search for her uncle. To keep busy and help in some way, she baked cherry tarts and made sandwiches for the rescuers at her restaurant nearby.

When she got the call that Kuz was found alive and well Monday morning, she rushed to see him.

"I was there in five minutes, just as he was coming out of the Bombardier."

Lamaga is the second Winnipeg senior to be found alive and well after being lost in the woods for days.

Nadia Monaco, 66, disappeared Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. when she became separated from a group picking mushrooms near Stead. She was not dressed for the cold, wet weather and did not have extra insulin she needed.

Searchers found the woman alive and well Friday morning in an abandoned shed about 500 metres from where she was last spotted.

Finding both seniors alive and OK is a relief, said RCMP Const. Miles Hiebert, commending all the searchers.

"We're batting 1,000."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 7, 2010 A3