An officer with Hamilton police’s marine unit says no ice is safe after bystanders helped rescue two youth who fell through the ice near the Pier 7 boardwalk.
“We are extremely fortunate that nobody was seriously injured and nobody lost their life,” Const. Rob Young told CBC Hamilton Sunday.
On March 7, he said, two youths went out on the ice near Williams Fresh Cafe and fell through.
According to a Hamilton Police Service news release, onlookers warned the pair it wasn’t safe, but they stayed on the ice. When they noticed it breaking, they tried to jump to safety but couldn’t and fell into the water.
Fortunately for them, “some people took some very, very courageous actions,” Young said. “Kudos to them for taking on extreme personal risk to help people they didn’t even know.”
The news release says four people went onto the ice to help and some of them fell into the water too. Officers arrived on the scene and used safety equipment to help pull everyone to shore.
Young and his team arrived as other first responders were pulling people out of the water and provided first aid to help prevent hypothermia, he said.
Paramedics took one of the youth to hospital for a checkup but everyone else was treated on scene, Young said.
‘Stay off the ice’: Toronto police warn of dangerous conditions
Temperatures hit 18 C on Saturday, but even if it had been colder, it would not have been safe to get out on the ice, Young said.
“The slogan you’ll hear from most people involved in ice rescue is ‘no ice is safe ice,’ particularly [in the] spring and fall when things are freezing or thawing,” Young said. “It is possible to be on the ice safely, but it takes a lot of preparation and a little bit of knowledge to do it appropriately.”
In Canada, about 35 per cent of drownings occur between October and April when most people don’t intend to go in the water, the Lifesaving Society said on its website.
The organization promotes March 1 as Ice Safety Day and warns that even in the summer, most water is below 20 C — cold enough for hypothermia to set in within and hour, no matter how well you swim.
Ice has to be at least 10 cm thick to safely walk, fish or ski on it, and at least 12 cm to drive a snowmobile on it, the Lifesaving Society says.
If you break through ice, stay calm and try to place your hands and arms on the unbroken surface, the Lifesaving Society says. Kick your feet and try to push yourself up on your stomach like a seal, spreading out to disperse your weight. Then, crawl along the ice until you’re on solid land.
In February, Toronto police warned the public to stay off ice after it said its marine unit was responding to daily incidents involving people venturing onto unsafe ice conditions.
Fortunately, Young said, rescues like the one on Saturday are rare for his team in Hamilton. He said they’ll learn from this one to improve their response in the future.
