Accidents on frozen lakes - Munich

Up to two dozen people broke through thin ice on Bavarian lakes last weekend, among them a mother with her two-year-old and her six month old baby in its stroller. According to eyewitnesses she had ignored the warnings of various locals and skated onto the ice with her children. Passers-by managed to pull her and the older child out while the stroller began to sink; members of the volunteer fire department and the DLRG (German Society of Life Savers) rescued the baby.

All weekend long, firefighters, police and water rescue teams were out on the lakes, saving people who had already fallen through the treacherously thin sheet of ice on various lakes or marking open spaces with tree branches. At Pilsensee and Wörthsee helicopters flew over the lakes, warning people already on the ice of the danger. However, the warnings were largely ignored.

“That amount of carelessness borders on impudence”, one fire department speaker said on Sunday.

The main risk lies in the thickness of the ice that can vary within a few meters. Currents caused by creeks and rivers flowing into the lake or by outlets keep the water moving and prevent it from freezing, so while you may start out on 20cm of solid ice two or three glides on your skates can put you in extreme danger.

Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung e-paper
no. 8, Monday 12 January 2009

Darwin was right, but as a population we work to confound his theories...

I was in ober-schwaben last week and went on a lake which freezes every year.

But in this case the deepest part of the lake is 2 metres, and the organisers told us it was frozen 15cms thick everywhere and they had even been on at 4cms one year.

Federsee

Regardless of Darwin - if there's a warning to leave an unsafe ice surface and you choose to ignore it, fall through the ice and the fire department or police save you it's only fair to charge you for their services, right? So don't moan if you get a bill for several thousand Euros, at least you're alive to sign the transfer.

Happens all over the place here too. Let's face it, some people are just really stupid. There was one case though where a 10 yr old had to to rescued when two teenage boys forced him out on to the ice. That's stupid and just plain mean.

If the child had fallen through the ice and died I think the word is murder , not stupid.

Coming from the UK, we are told from an early age never to venture onto frozen lakes. Of course, in the UK the ice rarely gets to a sensible thickness and so accidents are much more likely. However, given that the ice on Bavarian lakes sounds as though it varies considerably, and that the Germans tend to be organised about these things, is there an organisation responsible for assessing the dangers of walking on frozen lakes? Does the local council arrange to have the ice thickess checked? Or, and you can't rule this out, the locals just decide when it is safe, and probably know not to go on certain parts.

There are regular messages on the radio stations about not going on the ice and people still ignore them.

I think it's plain insanity to go out onto frozen lakes without 200% assuance that the ice is 20 cm thick or more - but then again I might be scarred by the story my dad told me of hunting in Wyoming in the winter (and it gets a helluva lot colder there than here) when the ice underneath him broke and he had to drag himself to shore breaking the ice down before he could get out.

Nymphenburg Kanal gives me the creeps when I even think about it - what if the "weak area" under the bridges broke and 4 or 5 or more people went down and were trapped under all the ice skaters and shuffleboard players. *shudder*

So I'm paranoid, but rather paranoid and safe than having the fire department pull my baby out of the ice in its stroller.

That's being pretty cautious. In Holland this weekend they were skating on ice that was at most 15cm thick - give or take - with thousands of people on the ice at once. Of course there, it's really organised there, with a website to consult on which lakes are open, which tours to take, and so on.

In Hamburg they open shops on the ice. In the great lakes in the US/Canada there are roads across the ice - the point being someone has to measure the ice thickness/strength and say if it's strong enough. When everyone says it's not then it's not. Simple.

Considering the risk the emergency services are exposing themselves too a monetary charge should be the least these idiots can expect. Fair enough if you're a moron and want to do stupid stuff but don't expect others to come to the rescue - many's the time that some idiot goes through the ice, others rush onto the ice in a gut reaction to help and end up the same way. The fact that people do come to the rescue speaks for their bravery and generousity, but really it's an avoidable accident.

According to a colleague, there were 'at least a couple hundred people' skating on the Unterschleissheimer See on Sunday. He was not skating, he was just walking around the lake. He also noted that the volunteer 'coast guard types' surrounded the lake just in case someone did fall in.

To fall through would be my worst nightmare (you always see the movies from the victim's perspective - a small hole and the current underneath taking the victim away from the hole and then the victim banging on the ice from underneath while the horrified friends watch from above. Shudder.

While out in the Truderinger Wald yesterday, we had to call the notartz for someone who had fallen and hit his head on the ice. The guy's head hit the ice with such a whack that everyone within 30m came running. He was out cold. This was on the pond in the old gravel pit, so it took the emergency about half an hour to get there through the forest. Just thought I'd point out that if you bring the kids for a skate, strap a noggin bucket on 'em.

The trouble is, over here, no one is willing to accept the responsibility of saying that the lake is properly frozen. As such, if you ever want to go onto the lake, you basically just have to risk it. Some people are stupid about it and fall through.

Falling through ice doesn't automatically mean you are stupid or have acted stupidly. Ignoring warning signs and actual people telling you it's too thin does mean you are pretty stupid.