Canada
Woman stands on her car and takes a selfie – while the vehicle sinks in the water
Videos and photos from the accident in Canada were viewed and shared thousands of times on social media; the woman cannot be seen
In a small community in Canada, residents could hardly believe their eyes. It all started with a car whizzing across the icy surface of a frozen river.
What happens in the rural Canadian community of Manotic on a Sunday afternoon is usually not even worth a story in the local news. But this past weekend was different – the events made national news in the Americas. Even CNN ran a video report of this most strange accident that happened there last Sunday.
The report first shows a yellow car speeding across the ice surface of the Rideau River. The film on CNN was only possible because many people in Manotik, a town of 5,000 south of Ottawa, recorded the events on their cell phones. “It’s been a pretty wild day in the quiet hamlet of Manotick, that’s for sure,” an eyewitness summarized the adventure of the yellow car and its driver. He was involved in rescuing the woman.
Actually a tranquil place in Canada
The reports do not reveal why she drove her car onto the ice surface of the river, which is very wide at this point and almost looks like a lake. Maybe the driver wanted to take a shortcut. In northern Canada there are areas where frozen bodies of water function as transport routes in the winter. Here, however, it turned out to be a bad idea.
Because the ice on the Rideau River only looked solid—an impression that proved treacherous. Because shortly before the yellow car arrived on the other bank, the journey was over: the vehicle broke through in a place with thin ice, the car began to sink.
The driver immediately climbed onto the roof of her car. In the meantime, a number of observers had seen their plight, and help was already on the way. Some residents called 911, while others grabbed a kayak and ventured onto the ice to rescue the woman. Because of the cold – it is currently around minus eleven degrees – the rescue had to be done quickly.
Despite the life-threatening situation, the driver apparently did not panic. The video images from that Sunday afternoon show her standing on the car and taking selfies. At the same time, the voices of rescuers rushing to the scene can be heard. “Hurry up!”.
Woman rescued from frozen river by kayak
Several helpers managed to get to the woman and her car on the ice and push her a kayak attached to a rope. The woman was rescued on the kayak and pulled away from the scene of the accident. By this time the car had already sunk quite far into the river.
The moment they rescued the woman, the car sank further, the eyewitness said. Towards the end of the report, only the yellow roof of the vehicle can be seen in the video images.
The driver survived her adventure unharmed, according to the reports. Her car is still in the lake – which also earned her a complaint. According to the police, she has to answer for a traffic offense because she caused a dangerous situation with her car.
The local police, who shared photos and reports from the ice adventure on Twitter, urgently warned the population against entering the ice surface. And of course before driving. “No ice is safe ice,” is the motto of law enforcement in this part of Canada. It’s a good thing that people rushed to help the woman so quickly.
Sources: “East Idaho News” (with the video from CNN), “News Nation USA“, Ottawa Police on Twitter
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