Firefighters save teen who fell through ice while playing hockey

Firefighters rescued a young man who fell through the ice while playing hockey on a pond in Massachusetts.

Dennis Whit Jr., 19, was treading water at Forge Pond in Hanover when his friend called 911 shortly after noon Wednesday.

“Right now he is [above the water]. He’s in the middle. It’s pretty f---ing thin out there,” his friend told the 911 dispatcher.

Deputy Barbara Stone says the young man is fortunate that rescue personnel arrived on scene before his energy was completely sapped.

“It was tough because he got to the point where he wasn’t sure he could hold on much longer,” she said in an interview with Yahoo News. “If he had gone under, it would have been very difficult to rescue him.”

Fire Chief Jeffrey Blanchard and others arrived on scene and threw out a rescue disc, which is a Frisbee-like device attached to a rope, to the man roughly 150 feet offshore.

This gave the victim a bit of stability until Cpt. Justin Reed and firefighter Eric Johnson could arrive on scene and head out onto the ice with a rescue sled to get the victim.

Other firefighters used ropes to pull them back to shore. Once on land, the young man was placed on a stretcher and rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was evaluated for hypothermia.

Dennis Whit Sr. said that his son’s body temperature had dropped to 82 degrees but was now back to normal and he will only have a few bruises, reported WBZ-TV.

“He’s my baby of 19 years, and I was pretty hysterical,” he told the local station. “I never let him go out on ponds. This is treacherous.”

This was the Hanover Fire Department’s third rescue of this type in just three years: Last year a dog fell through the ice, and the year before that a girl fell through at the same pond.

Later in the afternoon, firefighters had to tell other teenagers and young adults, presumably unaware of the incident, to get off the ice.

“Stay off it. The only guaranteed safe ice is an ice rink,” Stone said. “You never know the conditions under the ice. This particular pond has running water under it and never solidly freezes.”

Some locals claimed they stick to the perimeter when trekking out onto the pond because they know the center is too thin, according to Stone, who strongly advises against this tactic.

“If you know it’s not safe, you shouldn’t be on it,” she said. “Nobody ever thinks it will happen to them.”

Similarly, Massachusetts State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan issued ice safety tips earlier this month, warning, “No ice can ever be declared completely safe.”