More than 100 fishermen who were stranded on an ice floe that broke off into a Minnesota river were rescued this Friday, local authorities said.
Fishermen were on the floe in the southeastern area of Upper Red Lake in Beltrami County — about 200 miles northwest of Minneapolis — when it broke away from the shore. Shortly before 5:00 p.m., an emergency call reported that people were stranded and were more than 9 meters from the coast, according to a statement from the Beltrami County Police Department.
No one had fallen through the ice. But before rescuers arrived, some people who were nearby tried to rescue some of the trapped individuals in canoes and four of them fell into the water, police said. They were taken back to the ice floe to warm up in a fishing shelter, she added.
It took approximately two and a half hours to finally evacuate 122 people from the iceberg, with no injuries reported, according to police.
State officials have been warning people to be careful with the ice, which is unusually thin for this time of winter.
The fishermen were stranded a day after a passenger died when a commercial transport vehicle sank after breaking through ice on Lake of the Woods, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
Tracked vehicles, nicknamed "bombers" locally, are used to ferry clients to fishing spots far from the coast.
