A survivor of a boating incident in the Squamish Valley earlier this week that killed three people says it’s been a “challenging” ordeal.
The incident happened on Thursday, with Squamish RCMP confirming a day later that eight people were on board the boat. Five were rescued.
At approximately 1:52 p.m., police say they were called about a boat incident in the area north of Vancouver. Due to elevated water levels and challenging weather conditions, search and rescue and any recovery efforts were extremely difficult and unsafe. Search and recovery operations resumed Friday.
Spencer Seabrooke told Global News he and the other seven people were on board a fan boat trying to help others caught up in the flooding hitting B.C. this past week.
“It is very challenging, everybody has lost friends and family on the boat,” Seabrooke said in an interview.
He said the boat was in a “shallow area” that is off the main river when the incident occurred.
According to Seabrooke, the boat was pushed sideways by a large branch and was pulled into a log that crossed the opening of the creek.
“We hit it sideways and the right side of the boat popped up and the left side went under and it grabbed and turned the boat over and sucked it down underneath,” he said.
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All eight people on board were thrown off the boat, with Seabrooke saying he was briefly sucked under the log but was able to pop back up on the other side. He fought to get to shore and, once out of the water, ran down the path watching the others struggle.
At one point, he lost sight of most of those in the water but eventually saw the boat operator and screamed that he was coming. The operator told him to go back upriver where people needed help.
B.C.’s Sea-to-Sky region has been hit hard by the recent series of storms.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Village of Pemberton issued an evacuation order for properties on Airport Road, which includes the community’s airport, wastewater treatment facility, wildland fire management base and a public golf course due to flooding and “high-risk river levels.”
On Wednesday night, an evacuation alert was issued for the Electoral Area C portion of the valley and the village.
The province’s River Forecast Centre put the Sea-to-Sky corridor and Pemberton Valley under a flood warning on Thursday, but that was downgraded on Friday morning.
While conditions were difficult in parts of the province, Seabrooke said they were on flat water with no white caps, in a boat made to go over debris.
“The only thing that’s making this much more difficult is people piping up with their opinions about why we were out there and what we were doing and what our intentions were,” Seabrooke said.
He added that people have been putting out false information about how long the group was out in the area and what they were doing, saying people have “dug their nose into the business.”
“It was simply an accident that happened so quick,” he said. “Nobody was drunk, nobody was driving erratically, speed was not a factor. We simply had this split second of pushing off from the shore, getting hit with a branch and by the time we tried to pull away from the hazard, it was too late.”
—with files from Global News’ Amy Judd
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
