MINNEAPOLIS (Minnesota, US), Dec 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) — More than 100 people stranded while fishing on an ice chunk that broke free on a Minnesota lake were rescued on Friday, authorities said.
The anglers were on an ice floe in the south-eastern area of Upper Red Lake in Beltrami county – about 322km north-west of Minneapolis – when it broke loose from the shoreline.
An emergency call shortly before 5pm said the people were stranded with more than 9 metres of open water separating them from shore, according to a statement by the Beltrami county sheriff’s office.
Nobody had fallen through the ice. But before first responders arrived, bystanders had tried to take some of the people off by canoe and four fell into the water, the sheriff’s office said.
They were brought back to the ice floe to warm up in a fishing shelter, the sheriff’s office said.
It took about two and a half hours to finally evacuate 122 people from the ice floe, and no injuries were reported, according to the sheriff’s office.
State officials have been warning people to be wary of ice that is unusually thin for this time of the winter.
The stranding took place a day after a passenger died when a commercial transport vehicle crashed through the ice on Lake of the Woods, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
Tracked vehicles, locally dubbed “bombers”, are used to take customers to and from ice-fishing locations away from shore.
Minnesota is wrapping up an abnormally warm December, with temperatures above normal nearly every day of the month, the state’s Department of Natural Resources reported. Temperatures have been running 10-15 degrees above seasonal averages, making for poor conditions to create ice strong enough to support ice fishing in much of the state. — NNN-AGENCIES
