Since we're talking about defending against wild animals, I figured this article might make some interesting reading for you all.


I'm feeling his teeth.... I was helpless'
Bear-attack victim recounts vicious encounter on Port Renfrew wharf
Joanne Hatherly, Times Colonist
Published: Thursday, November 13, 2008

Blaine Pharis would rather talk about the fish that got away than the bear he got away from in Port Renfrew this summer.

"First fish, last fish, biggest fish," Pharis said of the seven-kilogram coho salmon he landed on Sept. 9, before he was attacked by a bear at the Port Renfrew Marina and RV Park wharf.

Pharis, 52, was at Victoria General Hospital yesterday, where he had travelled from his Saltspring Island home to say thank you to the emergency staff who came to his aid.

Pharis, a construction worker and former commercial fisherman, had just walked back to his 23-foot boat after gutting the coho when the black bear pulled itself up on the wharf. It was between him and the ramp back up to shore.

"I was in a dead end," remembered Pharis. "He was looking right at me. He ran past another man only two feet away from him and come right at me, loping."

Pharis tossed the fish away. "I don't even know what direction I threw it. I thought that would stop it."

It didn't.

Pharis leapt into his boat and the bear vaulted in after him, landing on Pharis and knocking him on his back between the boat's galley and a settee.

Pharis instinctively flung his left arm in front of his face. The bear set in biting his arm.

"The sound was the worst thing," Pharis said. "It sounds like flesh being pulled away from bone."

Pharis swung his free fist at the bear's head. The punch landed, but only caused the bear to drop his arm.

The bear then moved to Pharis's flank, digging in with every bite. "I'm feeling his teeth, his pull."

Pharis was beneath the bear, jammed tight between the galley and the settee, unable to move. "I was helpless."

That's when Pharis saw a man, who he learned later was Bruce Miller, 40, standing behind the bear with a metre-long gaff that had a 13-centimetre spike in it.

"He was lining up like he was going to hit a line drive." The gaff sunk in, but the bear "didn't even blink," Pharis says. Soon more men joined in, plunging gaffs and sharp objects into the bear. One man pounded at the bear's head with a hammer.

The bear responded by moving his attack from Pharis's trunk to his head. Pharis said he had just enough time to turn his face away.

"I figured if he bites my face, I'm going to be really ugly or I'm dead," Pharis said.

The bear's canines sunk into the back of his neck. Dr. Stephen Wheeler, head of emergency and trauma services for the Vancouver Island Health Authority, later said the teeth went between Pharis neck vertebrae, within millimetres of his spinal cord and large blood vessels.

All this time, the bear shook Pharis about as the men "yarded on the bear," moving Pharis back and forth with the bear.

His back now to the bear, Pharis could not see what was happening, but he felt the men pull the bear over to the port side of the boat with such force they lifted the bear and brought Pharis up to his hands and knees.

At that moment another man, Ed Stirling, stretched in through the window with a 30-centimetre filleting knife and slit the bear's throat. The bear rolled over Pharis and dropped to the floor, dead.

Wheeler was in an air ambulance helicopter which had been on its way to Sechelt when the call came in about the bear attack. Because of the helicopter's proximity to the incident, only one hour from the time of the attack Pharis was in the trauma unit at Victoria General. That made a difference in his recovery, Wheeler said.

"He had a serious attack, he had his neck ripped open. He could have been bleeding internally and dropped dead on us at any moment," Wheeler said, emphasizing the importance of a quick response time.

Pharis politely made it clear he's not comfortable being interviewed, but he wanted to ask the public to donate to the Victoria Hospital Foundation to buy new equipment for the new emergency and trauma centre that is being built here.


"This [attack] changed my attitude," Pharis said. "People might think they don't need to donate because 'it's not going to happen to me,' but it can. It happened to me. It shouldn't take that."

Learn more, or donate for equipment at the new trauma unit, at www.victoriahf.ca or by calling 250-414-6688.

NEW DISPATCH SYSTEM SPEEDS HELICOPTERS TO ACCIDENT SCENES

A new dispatch system being introduced this week will get air ambulance helicopters to trauma victims much quicker than before.

Until now, the decision to call in a helicopter to transport trauma patients was made by emergency, police or fire personnel at the scene where the injury occurred, whether at a car accident or a workplace.

The popularity of cellphones has made it possible to shorten emergency response times by cutting out the time it takes for emergency response teams to get to the site, said Dr. Stephen Wheeler, head of emergency services and trauma care for the Vancouver Island Health Authority. Wheeler developed the dispatch program with Randy L'Heureux, director for the Airevac/Critical Care Transport Programs.

"If you were going down the highway and saw a car crash, you'd have to drive to the next town to call 9-1-1. By the time you get there, you can't really remember what you saw," Wheeler said.

"The beauty of the cellphone is [witnesses] can now be standing at the side of the road. The dispatcher can ask specific questions about what they are seeing, and this allows us to automatically dispatch a helicopter before any medical, police or fire departments get to the scene."

This new protocol, called the B.C. Ambulance Service Air Ambulance Auto Launch System, is the first of its kind in Canada and one of only three in North America, Wheeler said.

-- Times Colonist