A dramatic ice rescue in the Far North saw a woman rescued from the ice minutes before the spring break up.
It happened on the Moose River in Moosonee on Sunday, April 30 around 9:30 p.m.
Moosonee Volunteer Fire Department Chief Scott Grant said they got a call about someone screaming for help on the ice.
"Everybody’s safe and sound. She’s off, she’s fine, she’s healthy. The firefighters are OK ... I just want to bring to light, we have a bunch of volunteers up there and they’re risking their lives for community members. We got her to the clinic, which is about a three-minute drive and my deputy chief called me and said ‘Hey, the river just broke and the ice is all gone.’ Right where she was standing, it’s not even just falling through, it all washed out,” said Grant.
Along with the fire department, the James Bay OPP and Weeneebayko Area Health Authority (WAHA) paramedics also responded to the scene.
It was too dark to see the victim so firefighters used a fairly new piece of technology for the department to find the victim, who was a woman in her early 20s.
"We used our drone with our thermal imaging camera and located the individual and once we did that we actually had our drone hover directly over the individual so our guys walking out on the ice could physically see where they were going to get her,” he said.
The woman was on the river's ice between Moosonee and Charles Island, which is between Moosonee and Moose Factory. It turned out that she was about 450 metres from the Moosonee shore.
The spring break up and ice going out on the river made the rescue more complex.
All of the firefighters are certified as ice water rescue technicians. The firefighters who venture out on the ice, explained Grant, are tethered to the shore so that they can be pulled back at a moment's notice.
“It’s very dangerous and the Moose River is a very violent river, it’s a very fast river and break up was imminent so we knew how dire it was to get this individual off the ice,” he said.
Before going out, Grant said they had learned the water on the river was starting to move and break up about three to five kilometres up river.
"We knew that it was a very dire situation, either we get her or she’d die and that’s why our guys risked their lives to go and get her,” he said.
Moosonee's volunteer fire department includes 28 people. There are two dispatch members, five drone team members and the rest are firefighters.
About 1.5 years ago, they invested in a drone that cost about $40,000, said Grant.
Since having it as a tool, it's been used 12 times.
“On Wednesday night we had a lost person that our drone team helped recover and safely get to the hospital as well. So this is the second rescue in a week that our drone team was able to perform,” he said.
