Local, state and federal agencies are searching for a 60-year-old Durango man, Andrew “Andy” Ward, after an empty canoe was discovered Friday at Lake Nighthorse in Durango.
Durango Police Department and Lake Nighthorse staff members began searching the area Friday evening, guided by the location of the canoe and an empty truck in a parking lot at the reservoir located southwest of downtown Durango. As of Saturday afternoon, Ward has not been located.
Ward was last seen at the boat launch at Lake Nighthorse around 1:30 p.m. Friday. He had a green canoe and was by himself, said Sgt. Nick Stasi with Durango police.
DPD asked anyone who knows where Ward may be, or who saw him at the reservoir, to contact Detective Josh Newman at 375-4733.
Multiple agencies are searching the entirety of Lake Nighthorse, and its 1,490-acre surface, for the missing man. But they also don’t have key information that would help reduce that search area.
“Even though it’s a small lake, it’s a big lake when you’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Ron Corkish, incident commander with La Plata County Search and Rescue.
Search crews do not have a location where Ward exited the canoe to help them orient their search. They know where the empty canoe was found, but they don’t know the undertow currents or winds that might have moved it.
“We really don’t have a best place to start from,” Corkish said. Instead, they’re searching what they call the “rest of the world.”
The first report of an empty canoe came in at 7 p.m. Friday. By 10:30 p.m., La Plata County Search and Rescue was called in to help, Stasi said.
About 16 hours into the search, 21 people were canvassing the shoreline and lake surface with the help of canines, Corkish said. In addition, Flight For Life and the U.S. Forest Service provided search helicopters. In total, seven agencies are involved in the operation, he said.
They plan to continue canvassing the shoreline throughout the day and will turn to underwater searches with additional resources, like an underwater search device, arriving from Denver.
Lake Nighthorse remains open to the public during the search.
“Really, we don’t know what happened to this gentleman,” Stasi said. “We don’t know if he’s on the shoreline, if he’s in the water, if he got picked up by another boat. We really have no idea.”
smullane@durangoherald.com
Editor’s Note: This article was updated to include the identity of the missing man, Andrew Ward, once it was released by the Durango Police Department on Saturday.
