On Tuesday afternoon, a man in Washington state unexpectedly fell into a partly frozen lake while police were nearby conducting a water rescue training session.
Officers from the King County Sheriff’s Office Marine Corps, along with members of the Mercer Island Police Department, were practicing their rescue techniques at Fish Lake in the Cascade Mountains when they noticed someone fall through the ice.
According to Sergeant Rich Barton from the sheriff’s office, one officer spotted a man slipping through. “Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy walking back, and one of my guys said, ‘He just walked past!'” he recounted.
Interestingly, the officers were still in training gear and ready to act immediately after finishing up their drill.
Barton shared that rescuers had to carefully crawl toward the man, who was struggling beneath the ice. They worked together to distribute their weight, using rescue equipment to secure him and quickly brought him to safety at the pier.
The man had been immersed in water that was quite cold—around 35 degrees Celsius—and was shivering violently.
Afterward, he explained that his two friends were close by and worried they might have fallen in as well if the police had not intervened promptly.
“There could have been three potential victims yesterday, and they could have lost their lives,” Barton reflected.
Once the drenched man was taken to a cabin to change into dry clothes, he was attended to by medical personnel before being allowed to leave on his own.
Barton commended his team, noting that had they not been practicing at that lake, it would have taken emergency services about an hour to reach the man. “It was the right place, the right time. I mean, if we weren’t there, you would have reported a different result,” he said.
