Recent thin ice deaths has local Search and Rescue urging caution

The deaths this months were all on lakes, with two reported on Grace Lake near Chilliwack and another on Shuswap Lake near Salmon Arm. While a lake may not be as dangerous as a frozen river, these recent tragedies highlight the need to always be extra diligent when it comes to ice.

“Especially if there’s snow on top, it all looks the same, but there will be a lot of variability with the number of factors. So we need to not think that we’ve assessed a little spot and then extrapolate that across the whole water body, that’s just not not acceptable,” Phillips said.

Having proper equipment can be life saving if you know you’ll be on ice, included the aforementioned ice awls and proper thermal clothing, but if you do find yourself with no gear Phillips explained the goal remains the same: stay calm, steady your breathing, and try to exit as horizontally as possible to evenly distribute your weight across the ice. However, if you keep trying and nothing is working, stabilizing yourself until help arrives is key.

“If you’re thrashing around and it’s not working and you’re just getting colder and more tired and you don’t have an immediate plan that’s working, then you need to settle in, find a way to try to freeze yourself to the ice shelf, or wrap a rope around your arm or something so that you’re not going to slip and fall unconscious. Or when you do fall unconscious, that you’re at least still at the surface with an airway,” she explained.

You can freeze yourself by spreading your arms out and sticking your jacket sleeves to the ice, or if you have facial hair, even freezing that to the ice. In a case like this, Phillips reminds the public of the importance of letting people know where you’ll be, so someone could rescue you, and also clothing choice.

“If you have floatation, you’re going to do a lot better than if you don’t. If you’ve got any sort of thermal protection, depending on what layers you’re wearing, you’ll be last longer in the water than if you don’t,” she said.

As for if you see someone who fell through thin ice, while your first instinct may be to rush out and help right away, Phillips cautions against this.

“If one person is fallen then we know that the ice is suspect, it’s likely that more people will end up in trouble as well.” she said.

“We all want to help when someone else is in trouble, but ending up with multiple people in trouble isn’t necessarily helping the situation. If we’ve got one person that’s already fallen through the ice or is in trouble or is drowning, you don’t need multiple victims,” she added.

What can you do if you want to help? Calling Search and Rescue or 9-1-1 would be a big help so trained professionals could respond, and staying with the victim and trying to help them calm down would be great too. Depending on the situation, an on-shore rescue may be possible as well, either by helping the person calm down and instructing them through an exit, or reaching out to them with something like a stick.

“The best rescue is shore based rescue,” she said.

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by Tommy Osborne

Recent thin ice deaths has local Search and Rescue urging caution

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