Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
A desperate search
-- Family fears for woman with diabetes missing since Wednesday -- Separated from group while picking mushrooms in Belair forest
Rain-soaked searchers gather outside the command centre.
A helicopter joins searchers Thursday as they comb a two-kilometre-square area of heavy woods looking for retired Winnipeg factory worker Nadia Monaco. (PHOTOS BY KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)
Nadia Monaco. (WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)
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STEAD, Man. -- The family of a diabetic grandmother lost in the woods since Wednesday morning said they're praying for a miracle as precious hours tick by following her disappearance.
About 70 searchers combed through a two-square-kilometre area of Belair Provincial Forest Thursday looking for 66-year-old Nadia Monaco, a retired factory worker from Winnipeg who was last seen at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.
The RCMP said the woman had been at the park with a small group of people to pick wild mushrooms, when Monaco separated from them.
Police said the woman is a diabetic who needs insulin but, as of Thursday afternoon, there were no clues pointing to her whereabouts.
Steady rain had dogged efforts by planes, human searchers and dogs to track the woman in the thick, flat bush about 90 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.
"We can do nothing," said Bart Monaco, the brother of Monaco's former husband, from Winnipeg. "It's in the hands of the good Lord and the people who are searching for her."
He said although his late brother and Nadia Monaco had divorced at least 10 years ago, his family stayed on good terms with her and her adult children.
Bart Monaco said the missing woman's adult daughter lives in the U.S. and he'd tried to reach her Thursday to break the news.
"I don't even know how to explain to her," he said. "Right now, we're just holding our breath."
Nadia Monaco was lightly dressed when she went missing, police said, wearing a blue hat, black shirt and grey pants. Police said the people she was with may not have immediately realized she was gone, but contacted police by about noon Wednesday to alert them. The Office of the Fire Commissioner, the RCMP D Division search and rescue team and trained volunteers with Search and Rescue Manitoba (SARMAN) headed out to Belair Wednesday afternoon to try to locate her. The search proceeded through the night Wednesday and centred on where Monaco was last seen.
"We'll most likely expand from there, but that's where our efforts are right now," said David Schafer, the office of the fire commissioner's manager of operations for municipal support. The OFC led the search with the RCMP. Schafer said there were "no clues" as of Thursday afternoon.
"If you can find a clue, at least it points you in the right direction, and that's what we're looking for, that first clue to really focus our efforts in one specific area and (then) we can start to flood that area," he said.
He said the woman's health was of "serious concern."
"She's going to have challenges out there," he said.
The whirring sound of an aircraft could be heard Thursday afternoon over the provincial forest, which covers a total of 200 square kilometres. Schafer said a helicopter with an infrared camera was used in the search.
"It's looking for a heat source," he said. "It would pick up body heat as long as it can see through the canopy of the trees."
An estimated 50 vehicles lined a wet and mucky gravel road leading into a thick brush of jack pines. Volunteer searchers on horses and all-terrain vehicles went past a command centre and logistics trailer officials had set up about one kilometre from Highway 304 and Stead Road.
Schafer said the plan was for the search to continue.
"(I'm) optimistic that we're still going to find a clue and we're going to keep at it," he said. He said members of Monaco's family were out searching for her as well.
gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 3, 2010 A3
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