By Sarah Stone

Warm weather brings river hazards

Apr 3, 2013 | 12:11 PM

As welcomed as spring may be for residents of Prince Albert after nearly six months of snow, it comes with a warning from the Prince Albert Fire Department.

Deputy fire chief Joe Zatylany cautions with the warm weather comes river hazards as the ice begins to break up and melt. He said unsupervised children playing on any body of water definitely concerns them.

“Snow can cover areas that do not have ice or that aren’t strong enough to handle even the weight of a small child or adult, so it’s important during this time of thawing and the water runoff that’s entering into the river and the drainage ditches that we watch where are children are and make sure that they’re not playing in areas that can be unsafe,” Zatylany said.

It was just on Sunday when Adam Shaw and his dog helped rescue to young girls who fell into the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta. However, Zatylany said although everyone is thankful Shaw rescued the girls, he explained most people don’t understand the dangers of a rescue mission. He added walking away unharmed from a situation like that is not always the case.

“There’s more cases out there of people trying to rescue and going under the water and under the ice and being lost more often than not, so thankfully these girls we’re rescued and they got to go home to their families and we share in that,” he said.

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Zatylany stressed that people should always call 911 immediately if they see someone on the ice.

“We have the specialized equipment to be able to handle water ice rescue and safely rescue somebody that’s still on the edge of the ice,” he said.

The PAFD has been training and testing their equipment for what Zatylany calls “one of the most dangerous times of the year we face ice.”

“We’ll go through all of our equipment, we’ll run some drills, practice some of our procedures on the ice … When we talk about weak ice and ice breaking up there’s many hazards for our responders that we need to exercise extreme caution with, so during this time we want to make sure that we’re ready for it,” he explained.

“Typically around the week of April 7 to the 14 we usually see the river let loose. We’ve had some cooler temperatures, so give or take anywhere in there. If we get a hot spell definitely more runoff would hit the river and the ice would lift up and break apart.”

Despite this time frame when the ice starts to break up, the PAFD never considers it safe to be on a body of water because there is no way to test every foot of the fluctuating ice surface.

“What happens is the water starts to warm up underneath the ice and it will erode different areas of the ice surface, so the river has channels depending on the depth and temperature of water, it won’t erode evenly and with the snow insulating the top it may look like it’s safe to across all the way across the river but in actuality it isn’t,” he explained.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84