Children in frozen lake plunge
Four youngsters in critical condition and two feared lost after ice gives way at Birmingham nature reserve
FOUR children were critically ill in hospital last night and two others were feared missing after falling through ice into a freezing lake.
The fire service said early reports indicated that children had been playing on the ice before falling in.
Members of the public jumped into the lake at Babbs Mill nature reserve in Solihull to rescue the children who were suffering from cardiac arrest when they were pulled from the water.
West Midlands Fire Service were searching the lake through the night after witnesses reported there had been six children in the water. However, Richard Stanton, the area commander, said that given the temperature, the time and the age of the potential victims, they did not expect to find anyone alive.
Police said the children were given advanced life support by firefighters and paramedics before being taken to Heartlands Hospital and Birmingham Children’s Hospital, where they remain in a critical condition.
The incident comes as the country faces temperatures as low as -10C in the next few days, after a weekend of snow and freezing fog. The worst affected motorways were closed yesterday, dozens of flights have been cancelled and some schools will be shut today.
A police officer suffered mild hypothermia trying to rescue the children before firefighters arrived at the scene where temperatures dipped as low as -3C yesterday. As specialist teams scoured the lake in sub-zero temperatures last night, witnesses said that five children were playing on the lake when the ice cracked. There was a group of youngsters playing near the lake which was completely iced over,” said Sophie, 23, a mental health support worker who did not want to give her surname.
“Two of them had gone on to the lake and people were shouting at them that it wasn’t safe. Then the ice cracked and
the leg of one of the boys went in. The other three on the bank then went in to help and soon they were all in trouble.”
She said: “They were all friends and just doing what kids do. They weren’t far from the bank when it happened.
“I saw them taking four children into the ambulances,” she added. “They stretchered them up the bank to the ambulances waiting. They were giving them CPR as they were moving.”
Ellie Harvey, 29, a mother of two who works in one of three nearby primary
schools as a lunchtime assistant, said that parts of the lake were not frozen over and the ice was thin.
“I understand they are all year five and year six primary school children,” she said. “I think they were a group of friends. There was ice on the lake but it wasn’t thick. In some places the birds were still swimming and in others they were standing on ice.”
Stanley Busumani, 30, who lives nearby, said that people around the park were distressed. “I have seen people
sobbing down their phones and a lot of very upset people,” he said.
Richard Stanton, fire service area commander, said: “A number of children had been playing on the ice on a lake and had fallen through the ice” and when firefighters arrived “police officers and members of the public were in the water trying to rescue the children”.
“Our crews entered the water, swam to the first child and our specialisttrained firefighters rescued three further children. The children were
brought out of the water where they received life-support care from firefighters and our ambulance colleagues.”
He said that firefighters were told “there were up to six people in the water. So after rescuing the four children, we continued the search-and-rescue operation.
“But given the temperature of the water, the age of those who entered the water and time they have been in there, this would no longer be a search and rescue operation.”