MANHATTAN - Earlier this week the Manhattan Fire Department took advantage of the nice weather and the ice on local park ponds to train their crews in ice and icy water rescue techniques.
"Every year we come out during the winter, when the ice is about the right thickness, when it's totally frozen solid. People probably won't fall through. It's in that kind of middle ground that somebody could feel safe going out on the ice away-ways and then they hit a weak spot and fall through." says Capt. Greg Van De Creek of the Manhattan Fire Department.
Fire crews practiced putting on ice suits and crawling across the ice, as well as swimming out into the icy water to practice rescue techniques.
"We have an ice suit that we wear out that you go in there, you don't feel any of the cold. We have rope systems that we have to get familiar with rigging up to pull the people back in. And we also have drones that we can fly out to the people and drop a lifejacket down to them and talk to them through a speaker. For sure. Somebody is coming." says Van De Creek, "It's good that we all practice it, but we also have several new guys that have never been in an ice suit before. So it takes a little bit of trusting that suit and knowing that, you know, it's going to keep you afloat, it's going to keep you dry. And then also going out, we did a few scenarios where the patient was kind of combative. They might not know what they're doing or they're panicky and they're trying to crawl on top of that rescuer. So we try to make it as realistic as we can for those rescues. It's not something we have to do very often, but we always say that those low frequency calls are usually the most high risk calls that we go on. So we don't do them a lot. But when we do, it's very dangerous. So this training is very important."