Update: Video added. Scroll down.
ABOUT 150 TO 175 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN RESCUED from an ice floe in Lake Erie this afternoon. Several hundred fishermen were all on the ice, some camping overnight, when one section broke away from the coastline in Ohio and started drifting. The site is in Ottawa County just east of Toledo.
WTOL-TV
The 2-ft.-thick floe is 8 miles long and about 1,000 yards off shore. A sudden warming of outside temperatures today led to a shifting in the ice along with the current and 35 mph wind gusts which accelerated the movement.
The U. S. Coast Guard got the first distress call at 10:45 am and the evacuation has been ongoing all day since then. Boats, hovercraft and helicopters from the U. S. and Canadian Coast Guards, Ohio State University and Monroe County emergency services are all participating.
Toledo and Washington Township fire departments, the latter equipped with two rescue hovercraft, were also reportledly assisting Jerusalem Township in the rescue efforts.
WTVG-TV
According to local ice fishermen, the season’s thick ice has attracted more people than usual to the lake this winter. “There was a heck of a city out there for the last week and a half, two weeks,” local resident Peter Harrison, 71, told The Associated Press.
Most of the victims are not in immediate danger, but the rescue was being handled with as much urgency as possible because of the chance for the ice to continue to deteriorate. Rescue operations were discontinued after 3:30pm once it became clear those at risk had been recovered. One small group remained off shore on the ice “to protect their expensive equipment” according to television reports.
Shortly after 3:40 pm it was reported that one man has died after falling through the ice.
Gathered from reports by:
CNN
WTOL Ch. 11
WTVG Ch. 13
