Two anglers saved from Rice Lake
ROSENEATH - It was a dramatic rescue as, one by one, two fishermen were pulled from the frigid waters on the south shore of Rice Lake on Tuesday afternoon.
The Alnwick-Haldimand Township Fire Department was called to Dunnette Landing Road near Roseneath shortly before 2 p.m. on reports of two people in the water struggling to stay afloat. Hamilton Township Fire Department were also called to the rescue.
Cassie McKeown, who lives nearby with her family, said she was outside and saw one person with his head in the water and another man go into the water, apparently trying to come to the rescue.
“I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, so we (along with her mother Melissa) came down (to the dock area) and sure enough there were two people in the water.”
McKeown said she had seen the men earlier fishing farther out near an island on Rice Lake. It appeared the two men were coming to shore when they went through the ice.
“It was terrifying, it was scary,” she said.
“The one guy was really having a hard time staying above water. I thought he was going to go under, so I just kept yelling at them to relax and breathe and to float.”
McKeown estimates the two men were in the frigid waters for more than 30 minutes.
Bystanders stood by as Captains Doug Mead and Jeff Waldie went out on the inflatable ice-water rescue craft, while firefighters on shore used a rope to keep them secured for safety.
When they got to the two men, Mead said, “we grabbed the first guy and got him into the boat. He was saying to grab his friend.
“The first guy was the worst, so we had to get him to shore fast.”
Police and firefighters on shore ran with the rope to pull the rescuers to shore with the first victim. The two firefighters then went back for the second victim.
“We didn’t know how long he could hold on to the cooler, so we tried to get to the second victim as quickly as possible,” Mead said.
“He could hardly speak. As soon as we grabbed him, he went numb.”
McKeown said, sadly, it’s not uncommon to see fishermen to go through the ice.
“You have to come down a hill, so you’re looking over the entire lake and you can see the dark patches where the ice is not strong enough to hold anything — and people will still go out there and still fish,” she said.
“You expect them to go through.”
Mead said if it wasn’t for McKeown spotting the two men, it could have ended in tragedy.
“If Cassie wasn’t home, they may not have been spotted at all, because a lot of the waterfront homes are seasonal.”
The two men were taken to hospital, but their condition wasn’t known by press time. However, later that afternoon, OPP responded to reports that there were other fishermen out on the ice in the same area where the men had been rescued.
“Everybody came together including members of the Hamilton Township Fire Department and OPP, and it was a successful rescue thanks to the combined efforts of everyone,” Mead said.