Vehicles being pulled from Red River

CTV’s Danton Unger followed a Manitoba salvage company as they work to remove vehicles submerged in the Red River.

A local salvage company is trying to bring answers to the surface about a mystery that lurks at the bottom of the Red River in Selkirk, Man.

On Monday, a truck was pulled from the murky depths of the river.

It’s part of a cleanup and salvage effort by Submerged Underwater Services.

The company’s COO Shawn Goertzen said his team came across the truck using sonar during a training exercise.

But on Monday, when they dove down to pull it up, they discovered there were a lot more vehicles than they first thought.

“When you look at the sonar, it looked like three, maybe four,” he said.

“As it is, right now, I don’t know. I mean, there could be seven, could be eight.”

Getting them out is no easy task.

A diver has to swim 23 feet down and attach massive air bags to the vehicle. A crane is then able to hoist it from the water.

For this first truck alone, the process took hours.

“It was just really difficult, because, again, everything was buried up past the wheels,” Goertzen said.

As for how it ended up in the river, Goertzen said that’s for the police to determine.

Officers were on site Monday running the truck’s licence plate and VIN number to see if it is connected to any crimes or MPI reports.

“Whatever the reason, it’s still a crime that these are in the drink, right? So they just have to figure out what, why and how, and so on and so forth,” Goertzen said.

The cleanup is welcome news for local fishers, who say they keep getting snagged on the vehicles.

Goertzen said he’s happy to be doing his part to clean up the Red River, one submerged vehicle at a time.

“At some point, someone has to do something and go recover this stuff and do something about it. So, you know, it might as well be us.”