Grizzly bear attacks schoolchildren and teachers in Bella Coola, B.C., two in critical condition

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Educators used bear spray, bear bangers and anything they could to fend off a grizzly bear that attacked their Grade 4 and 5 students on a field trip into the woods on B.C.’s central coast.

Four people – one adult and three children – were badly mauled Thursday in the coastal community of Bella Coola and were airlifted to hospital in Vancouver, with two in critical condition, BC Emergency Health Services said. Seven others were treated for mild injuries and nine students from the Acwsalcta School unscathed, authorities said.

As the tight-knit Nuxalk First Nation grappled with the brutal attack on students of their private school, the provincial Conservation Officer Service was warning everyone to stay indoors Friday. Eight officers were dispatched to investigate and to set traps. The officers collected physical evidence so they can try to match it to any animals they catch.

Hzita Brown Mack, a Nuxalk elder, posted on social media that her granddaughter’s life was saved by an education assistant who fought the bear off her so that a colleague could grab her and run to safety with the others.

Samuel Schooner, elected Chief of the Nuxalk Nation, was one of many political leaders calling the teachers and their assistants heroes, noting they were well trained and responded properly in an incredibly tense moment. He said at a press conference in Bella Coola he was grateful “when tasked with making the ultimate decision of life and death, that they chose to lay their lives on the line for the students.”

“These children are going to be around for many, many, many years because of the actions that they have done,” he said.

Inspector Kevin Van Damme of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service told reporters in Vancouver on Friday that the attack was extremely rare, noting in 34 years on the job he has never seen a grizzly maul such a large group of people.

“We are trying to determine the behaviour, and why the bear acted in the way it did.”

Noel Pootlass, the head Nuxalk hereditary chief, was proud of the way his cousin, a teaching assistant at the school, responded. He “took the main onslaught” of the injuries and helped his colleagues fight off the bear.

Mr. Pootlass told The Canadian Press he heard from a parent of one of the children that people were “whacking the bear over the head with what they could use, and the bear eventually ran away, but bear spray didn’t work, and they had to use human force.”

He said his cousin is now being treated for his severe head trauma at a Metro Vancouver hospital, along with the three students badly injured. Mr. Pootlass said before those patients were airlifted from the local hospital he saw one young boy in the emergency room with head injuries and “his face was just covered with scratches.”

There was probably 100 people in the local emergency room at one stage, he said.

“Parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, and it was a terrifying experience for them,” Mr. Pootlass said.

Insp. Van Damme said conservation officers believe a bear had been previously injured in the community, but it wasn’t clear whether that was the same one that attacked the school group.

He said there are a number of grizzly bears in the area and they co-exist with the community.

“The Nuxalk Nation is well versed with co-existing with grizzly bears,” Insp. Van Damme said.

The Bella Coola Valley is well known for grizzly bear viewing. Ellie Lamb, who has been guiding tourists to view bears in the valley for the past 17 years, said her heart is aching for the Nuxalk community that she knows well.

She said the behaviour of the bear involved in the attack was without precedent, in her experience, and could not have been anticipated.

“There was contact, and not just with one, but with multiple people and that implies to me, as a bear behaviour person, that this bear was extremely stressed.”

With a report from The Canadian Press