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Oswego Scout Saves Child Who Fell Thru Ice

Zac Thomas was walking his younger brother home from school in Oswego when the boys spotted a fourth grader climbing a brick retention wall and then walking on the ice of a neighborhood pond.

“I was thinking to myself, he’s going to fall in, he’s going to fall in,” Thomas said. “The ice broke and he fell in. I jumped off my skate board, stopped it, ran down, jumped off of the wall, ran down there and helped him out.”

You can still see the foot prints in the snow and the gaping hole where the ice cracked and the child slipped through. Thomas recalls those tense moments.

“A lot of people have asked me if I was worried about him getting hurt himself,” Zac’s mother Angela Prusinski said. “I didn’t really think about that, I thought more about the fact that he helped a child his brother’s age to safety… It’s scouts, scouts, scouts. I think we’re living and breathing it at this point.”

Safe Ice Thickness

Ice Thickness Permissible Load

3 inches or less …………………. NOT SAFE

Single person on foot:  4 inches          Group in single file: 712 inches            Passenger car (2-ton gross):  8 inches

*Solid, clear, blue/black pond and lake ice
Slush ice has only half the strength of blue ice. The strength value of river ice is 15 percent less.

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