About 200 American fishermen were rescued on Monday, trapped on a huge patch of drifting ice on a vast lake in Minnesota, in the northern United States.
It was around 11:30 a.m. Monday on Upper Red Lake, near the border with Canada, when rescuers received a call that about 100 people had noticed that the patch of ice they were standing on to fish was not more directly connected to the shores of the lake.
Gracieuseté Facebook/Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office
Arrived on the spot, the emergency services “discovered a large plate separated (from the rest) by up to 27 meters of water, blocking the fishermen”, notes the press release from the local police, whose images show an icy landscape as far as the eye can see. view, the farthest shores unseen.
Using drones in particular, the rescue services spotted a narrower crossing point, like an isthmus, on which they were able to place a makeshift pontoon to bring the fishermen to safety.
Worried that some, isolated on the ice, are not aware of the situation, the authorities have even triggered an alert system via mobile phones.
Gracieuseté Facebook/Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office
In the end, “about 200 people were evacuated,” Beltrami County police said in a statement posted on their Facebook page.
Minnesota, a northern state in the Midwest dotted with bodies of water, is nicknamed “the land of ten thousand lakes”. Fishing through the ice is a popular practice here in the winter.