Missing toddler survives night outside in rural Alberta

A toddler was found alive and safe more than eight hours after wandering away from their rural home in northern Alberta.

A two-year-old child was found early Monday morning one kilometre away from their family home in rural Alberta almost eight hours after they were reported missing.

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The family called Fairview RCMP, in Clear Hills County in north-western Alberta, shortly before 10:30 p.m. after looking for and failing to find the child on the property.

Several emergency agencies sent resources to help with the search, including from B.C., and more than 100 community members joined the effort.

“Search and rescue, being more adept at this kind of situation, set up the command centre right away at the residence as soon as they got there and they were able to then coordinate the efforts,” Corp. Mathew Howell told CTV News.

“Then, it is terrain… In this case, it’s big open fields. Not all of it is well kept – bushes and so on. Because there were so many volunteers, they were able to do other things that were, I guess in a certain sense, precautionary. For example, there was a few dugouts that were filled with water and stuff like that… They were able to start emptying those out to make sure that the child hadn’t unfortunately gone into one of those.”

The child was spotted by a helicopter crew at 6:05 a.m. They were not hurt.

“Grand scheme of things, for a young child to walk a kilometer overnight, probably while being tired and everything else, is still pretty significant,” Howell said.

He said the child left the home on their own without the parents realizing the other didn’t have them.