I have never heard of a team doing this ...

[BladesRobinson]

I would just like to add one comment to my original post...

In NO WAY am I questioning the technique used by this team in Paulding County. I strongly suspect that they had an unusual situation that resulted in an unusual solution. I thought it was unique and I was just curious if anyone else had used explosives to break ice.

I realize it is always easy to "Monday morning quarterback" a decision and that was not my intention.

The end result is this team removed the vehicle.

 

[eckybay]

I'm sure that there was a lot more thought put into it than it sounds like... remember, you're getting the "reporter" end of things, and there's most certainly some discrepencies there.

True enough - I'm sure there's tons of details that are missing. The destruction is the interesting part, so that's what the focus of the story is on. It's just kind of amusing to think of all these people out there blowing up the ice. It makes sense to get the ice broken up so it's easier to tow the car out if you think about it.

I'm just not a fan of some of the policies "higher-ups" come up with in the local sheriffs department, so any chance I get to make fun of them, I take. no on me, I know...)

Ultimately, the car is out of the water with nothing leaking and nobody got hurt in the process, so that's a good thing, right?

 

[erparamedic]

I would just like to add one comment to my original post...

In NO WAY am I questioning the technique used by this team in Paulding County. I strongly suspect that they had an unusual situation that resulted in an unusual solution. I thought it was unique and I was just curious if anyone else had used explosives to break ice.

I realize it is always easy to "Monday morning quarterback" a decision and that was not my intention.

The end result is this team removed the vehicle.

It certainly does sound like an unusual situation... and often, the unusual situations take unusual ingenuity to solve. Sounds like they got the job done, had fun, and probably learned alot in the process. Nobody was hurt in the vehicle recovery, and that's what matters most.

Again... the article is a "reporters" view of things... and we all know how twisted some things become once the reporters get hold of them! I'm sure that all the details were NOT told... and that's ok.

 

[erparamedic]

True enough - I'm sure there's tons of details that are missing. The destruction is the interesting part, so that's what the focus of the story is on. It's just kind of amusing to think of all these people out there blowing up the ice. It makes sense to get the ice broken up so it's easier to tow the car out if you think about it.
Ultimately, the car is out of the water with nothing leaking and nobody got hurt in the process, so that's a good thing, right?

Absolutely! Probably much easier (and ultimately safer) to blow the ice up... than to take the axes and piks to it. By blowing it up... it's timed charges, and everyone is (theoretically) out of the water/out of the way. No chance of chopping up the ice, and falling thru.

Of course, I should also say... any time you tell a firefighter to tear something up... it's open season, and anything is game! Once a firefighter... always a firefighter! LOL (I know, I married one!)

 

[CBulla]

This sounds like something I would have been a part of, for whatever reason. A shame it was so far north.

 

[Gilldiver]

It sounds like alcohol may have been a factor in how they got it out. What a fuster cluck. I wonder why they didn't just mark it and leave it until the ice melted?

Gary D.

Have you ever tried to crack a 10' x 20' hole in 1 to 3 feet of ice?

30 pounds is a bit excessive, a normal operation would be about 8 two pound charges set off in a circle around the car. The bigest problem is to loosen it so it can be pulled out without dropping it to the bottom.

This sounds like a worst caase, a car on the bottom only weighs what it normaly does. A car stuck at the water/ice/air interphase for a few days can easily have another 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of ice in it.

I have pulled a number of snowmobiles and it is not easy.

 

[Yotsie]

Nolan said the Lima bomb squad set off about 30 pounds of explosives on a first attempt. The second time they reset six charges around the vehicle to get the ice to break up around the car.

I gotta move to a colder climate. Listening to your guys' ice stories...

"The exciting part was watching the Lima Police Department blow it (the ice) up. We've done plenty of cold water training and activities. Blowing the ice around it was the neat part," said Nolan.

I just hope no one from our EOD team see this, or they'll be following us around like ambulance chasin' lawyers.

 

[Lucy's Diver]

Anyone see that Discovery show on ice trucking? Apparently various rivers and lakes in Canada form a highway of sorts of 18 wheelers supplying industrial sites way up north when they freeze. Occasionally the 18 wheelers go through the ice. Many stay stuck half sunk at the waterline and freeze back in. This company seemed to have the art of recovering both fully sunk and half sunk trucks down to a science. They use explosives to free the trucks.

Maybe these people knew what they were doing.

Or maybe they watched the Discovery channel.