DARWIN AWARD... message to all of us.... Sorry for the coldness of this post...

[Nik]

150 fishermen on Lake Erie... Ice flow break up... USE YOUR COMMON SENCE AND DONT BECOME A DAWIN AWARD WINNER...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090207/ts_nm/us_usa_fishermen_accident_2

 

[Peggie Hall HeadMistress]

Welllll...actually...

Ihe ice FLOE didn't break up...but the shallow ice bridge to it--which had been covered by a plywood "bridge"-- did...casting the ice floe--which is actually in pretty good shape--adrift.

If the ice floe itself had broken up, the death toll would be a lot larger.

So I'm not sure the people on it are really candiidates for the Darwin Award.

 

[Jumpstart]

As usual, the media presents a rather distorted image of what happened. This area is in the western basin of Lake Erie where the water is partially protected by islands allowing the ice to get pretty thick. There were actually about 500 fisherman on the ice when the crack opened up. BTW, the group included professional ice fishing guides and their customers. It is not like there were a bunch of dumb fisherman on a little cake of ice. Since the gap was too wide to traverse about 135 people had to be rescued by local emergency forces and Coast Guard helicopters. This happens occasionally so they have air boats to help evacuate the fishermen. Actually those fisherman who had snowmobiles and or ATVs followed the crack east for a mile or so to where there was no separation and easily made it to shore on their own. The only injury/fatality was a gentlemen who had a pre-existing heart condition and fell off the back of a snowmobile when he had a heart attack.

Bottom line is that it was poor judgment to go out on the ice with the high winds. The warm temperatures (50) had little influence on the situation seeing that the ice was over a foot and half thick. The 35 knot+ winds caused the whole ice pack to move about 300 yards to the north necessitating the rescue. The Walleye were hitting, the previous 25 days were below freezing with single digit temperatures, and it was a nice sunny day. This was definitely not as bad as about 20 years ago when a Coast Guard icebreaker cut a bunch of fisherman afloat when it was going to a research lab on South Bass Island.

 

[newly anonymous]

the local sheriff apparently takes a dimmer view than Peggy

So I'm not sure the people on it are really candiidates for the Darwin Award.

A quote from a USA Today article titled: 'Idiotic': Sheriff disappointed in Lake Erie fishermen
"We get people out here who don't know how to read the ice," Ottawa County Sheriff Bob Bratton said. "What happened here today was just idiotic. I don't know how else to put it."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-02-07-lake-erie_N.htm

 

[dancing bear]

People are pretty harsh about this...

The people leaving comments on the news articles are pretty harsh. I suppose they never screw up, and never need help.

It seems Erie is often intolerant of bad judgment.

 

[Stu Jackson]

Sure, everybody screws up, sometimes BIG time

usually with their boats. Highest candidates are docking, anchoring and sail stuff. But "life threatening" is usually NOT an issue. Heck, when we started sailing our C22, I ended up losing the whole rudder tiller combo in very high winds because I put an ice chest underneath the tiller and it worked out of the pintles! Dumb - you bet. But I learned from that. I also learned to stop complaining about docking and practiced, practiced, practiced. How many of YOU do that?

I'm just waiting for the idiots who were out on the ice flow to start suing someone: the ice, G*d, the local county, you name it. Just plain stupid is way different than making mistakes.

They should be thankful for beign alive, and be thanking th folks who saved them. Emphasis on SAVE, not simply "helped us out."

 

[Ross]

The candidates come in all flavors. It is 56 degrees here and I just saw a young man on a motorcycle in a short sleeve tee shirt and short pants heading out for a ride.

 

[letterman]

I'm from Ohio, Cleveland. They were ice fishing Saturday because the ice was 18" deep, which is deep enough to drive a car on, which they use to do but now use snowmobiles.
A few years ago the same thing happened, only the "island" that was created was 10 miles long! There were dozens of cars and trucks on it that went to the bottom, eventually.
I'm sure the Sherriff was pissed because they just laid off a lot of Deputies due to budget cuts, and now this, which has to cost something. If he had money in the coffers it would have been "happens every year or so". The Lake did not freeze enough the last two years for good ice fishing, so everyone was out this year.
Last I heard, Monday morning, the 9th was that theyy got all the gear and equipment off Sunday that was left behind from Saturdays CG order that everyone must leave NOW.
Believe me, this is not a Darwin event.

 

[Bob V]

They're heading back out today.

The article that I read said that some were just going to retrieve the gear that they were ordered to abandon when they were rescued but others are going fishing because the Walleye are biting. They may qualify for a Darwin award yet before this is all over.

 

[Nik]

I am glad to see some good posts to this. Thankfully NO ONE got a Darwin Award. But the whole point, that several of you did get, was to use common sence and to be careful.

 

[Jumpstart]

70% of the fishermen got off the ice on their own by going up to 7 miles east. The sheriff is griping because he is having a budget crisis. The local merchants are not too happy with the sheriff because he is threatening civil fines for their customers. The tax paying merchants of Port Clinton and ice fishing guides depend on ice fishing to augment their income.

Bottom line, poor decision by fishermen but no more than a number of emergency calls in the summer. The CG station (Marblehead) for this area has one of the highest number of emergency calls in the country in the summer.

Actually, not much of a story here. The fatality caused national news coverage. It turned out the fatality was a guy having a pre-existing heart condition falling off the back of a snowmobile when it went through the ice. The driver was ok and taken care of by other fishermen.

 

[Jumpstart]

Google earth shot of area in question