122 people rescued from Upper Red Lake ice floe
Updated 9 :10 p.m.
Beltrami County authorities say they rescued 122 people who were stranded on an ice floe in Upper Red Lake Friday evening.
Sheriff Jason Riggs said emergency dispatchers received a call around 5 p.m. stating roughly 100 people were stranded on an ice chunk on the lake with more than 30 feet of open water separating them from shore.
Emergency crews were dispatched to the scene staged at a resort on the southeastern shore of Upper Red Lake. Beltrami County Emergency Management sent out an Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Wireless Emergency Alert instructing anglers where to evacuate.
Before emergency responders arrived on scene, bystanders attempted to evacuate some of the stranded people by canoe, and four people fell into the open water during the attempt. They were brought back to the ice floe to warm in a fishing shelter.
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Emergency responders were able to start evacuating people from the ice floe at 6:40 p.m., and everyone had been brought to shore just by 7:37 p.m., Riggs said.
No injuries were reported during the incident, Riggs said, and only the four people who fell from the canoe ended up in the water.
Riggs said the sheriff’s office was assisted by recuse crews from Kelliher, Blackduck, Bemidji, Becker County and the state Department of Natural Resources.
The DNR has warned that lake ice across the state is much less stable than in years past.
On Thursday, Riggs said on the sheriff department’s Facebook page that “few, if any, areas of the state have the ice thickness necessary” to hold structures placed on the ice for fishermen.
Riggs said conservation officers and county deputies have responded to several recent incidents of vehicles and wheelhouses falling through the ice. That includes three rescues on Upper Red Lake so far this year before Friday’s rescue.
Also on Thursday, a passenger died after a commercial transport vehicle crashed through the ice on Lake of the Woods.
Temperatures in northern Minnesota are expected to drop, but officials warned that it will still take several days for the ice to thicken.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.