DOOR COUNTY, Wis. — The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 66 people who had become trapped on three ice floes while fishing.
The ice started breaking around 9 a.m. Thursday in Door County, Wisconsin, but those on the frozen water couldn’t get off in time, WBAY reported.
The chunks of broken ice floated about 1,000 feet from shore, so the Coast Guard was called to deploy ice rescue teams to pluck the fishermen from the floes.
In all, the Coast Guard, along with state and local agencies, took four hours to rescue the 66 people from the floating ice. No one was hurt.
One person who was helping with the rescue said he hadn’t ever seen the ice break up this way in his 30-plus years of fishing on Sturgeon Bay.
“In my years being on this ice, I’ve seen it open north, south, but I’ve not seen it where you got a split going to the west in that north-south region; and there must be a super-strong current today. I’ve never seen that,” Dale Stroschein told WBAY.
One of the rescuers reminded the anglers that there is danger in ice fishing.
“As we say in the Coast Guard, there isn’t safe, there’s just safer ice,” Lt. j.g. Phillip Gurtler told WPR. “Whenever anybody goes out, they need to make sure to check the weather beforehand, and they really need to check the ice before they go on out there, verify its thickness, and not just its thickness, but make sure it’s actually good, solid, clear ice.”