Watch: How they rescued preschoolers stranded on thin ice
On Monday the sled run was particularly icy, and the two children shot out toward the center of the pond.
Two children stranded amid cracking ice on a frozen Michigan lake were rescued by firefighters who inched out on their bellies.
Cora Haupt, 4, and her brother Bobby, 2, had been playing in the snow Monday at their home in Shelby Charter Township, on the north edge of the Detroit metro area.
“Bobby wanted to go on the sled, so down we went, all the way out into the ocean,” Cora later told TV station WDIV.
It wasn’t actually the ocean, it was a retention pond behind their house. The sled run usually stops at the shore, but on Monday the snow was particularly icy, and the two children shot out toward the center of the pond.
Their 13-year-old brother, Cayden, tried to walk out to them, but the ice cracked under his weight.
As the children’s father began pumping up a raft, their mother called 911. On the recording of the call, a dispatcher instructs her: “Say, ‘Bobby and Cora, don’t move. Mom’s got help on the way.’ Don’t move, tell them.”
Firefighters were there within minutes and came up with a rescue plan. Two of them lay flat on the ice and inched out toward the children, pulling a tether, as the ice cracked around them. When they were able to grab the strap of the toboggan, their colleagues on shore reeled in the tether, dragging both men and the children.
Twenty minutes after their ill-fated sled run, the children were safe on shore.