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Fire Dept Receives 911 Call From Inside Car Sinking Into a Frozen Pond, Know Exactly What to Do

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Dire circumstances on New Year’s Eve did not stop a woman trapped inside her sinking car from taking steps in an effort to save her life.

At about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, the woman called 911 to report that her SUV was sinking into an icy retention pond in Indianapolis.

“It’s coming in,” she told the emergency dispatcher, according to WTVA. “It’s filling up. It’s cold.”

The dispatcher told the woman that emergency responders were en route, as other witnesses had also called 911 after seeing the vehicle break through the ice.

Though the dispatcher tried to guide the trapped woman to safety, the call was soon disconnected.

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“Dispatch had been on the phone with the person in the car and the call dropped as soon as she started to go under the water,” Indianapolis Fire Department Battalion Chief Rita Reith told WXIN.

The fire department’s dive team soon arrived, though at that point, the vehicle was about 90 percent underwater, according to the Indy Star.

First responders could hear the woman banging on the window, and the car itself was about 20 feet away from land and 12 feet deep into the water.

Diver Ben Roberts was able to break the glass of the car’s sunroof, and with the help of his fellow divers, he pulled the woman out of the vehicle and back to shore.

All told, the woman was out of the water by 8:47 p.m.

The fire department posted photos of the rescue effort to its Facebook page, and noted that the woman, who has not been named, was in critical condition at a local hospital.

#IFD Tac 7 Divers rescue woman from submerged vehicle after she drives into retention pond at Sundance Apts. She remains in critical condition at Eskenazi Hospital.

Posted by Indianapolis Fire Department on Sunday, December 31, 2017

The department also posted a video of the rescue.

#IFD Tac 7 Dive Rescue Sundance Apartments

Posted by Indianapolis Fire Department on Sunday, December 31, 2017

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According to Reith, officials are having a hard time ascertaining why the woman drove onto the ice in the first place.

“It’s unclear as to how or why she was on the ice, but she came from a parking lot area, got onto the pond somehow and drove about 150 yards before, either she realized she was on the pond, or she was driving and the pond just broke through, we’ll never really know until we can talk to her,” Reith said.

Reith also emphasized how cold the weather was at the time the incident took place. On Sunday night, the temperature was around zero degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s cold weather, cold water, we’re all hoping for the best, She still remains in critical condition and the divers just did a heck of a job, everybody here worked really hard to get this woman out of the water,” Reith said.

The divers initially attempted to pull the woman’s car out of the water as well, but their equipment froze.

“(The divers) did have some regulators freeze, which caused that diver to be pulled from the water, and so that’s a chain reaction because it affects the way our divers react,” IFD special operations chief Kevin Jones told WISH.

Due to several additional issues, the divers decided to come back and try again when it’s warmer outside.

“This is a little bit different for us, as far as it’s been a while since we had the extreme cold temperatures,” said Jones. “However, we train our people the best we can to prepare for this.”

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Joe Setyon was a deputy managing editor for The Western Journal who had spent his entire professional career in editing and reporting. He previously worked in Washington, D.C., as an assistant editor/reporter for Reason magazine.
Joe Setyon was deputy managing editor for The Western Journal with several years of copy editing and reporting experience. He graduated with a degree in communication studies from Grove City College, where he served as managing editor of the student-run newspaper. Joe previously worked as an assistant editor/reporter for Reason magazine, a libertarian publication in Washington, D.C., where he covered politics and wrote about government waste and abuse.
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