A 14-year-old girl was taken to the hospital with signs of hypothermia after plunging into icy water in New Jersey Tuesday, authorities said.
Authorities say the girl and two friends had climbed along a pipe that leads from the shore of the Sandy Hook Bay near Leonard Avenue in Middletown out to the water. The girl apparently lost her footing and fell.
Officials initially got a call that a person was stuck on the ice around 3 p.m.; by the time first responders arrived, the girl was in the water. Her two friends were stranded on the ice but had not fallen in.
Chopper 4 captured an extensive emergency response. Fire trucks and ambulances lined up on the street near the water and rescuers were seen climbing out to where the girl apparently fell in.
She was pulled from the water and taken to Riverview Medical Center.
Emergency responder Jack Houston later recounted the rescue: "She managed to get herself onto an ice flow. She'd fallen through, got herself back up onto the ice and that's where she was when we made contact with her."
"She was very cold, very wet and a little hypothermic, but I'm sure she's going to be fine," he added.
Locals said the Sandy Hook Bay does not usually freeze over the way it has because it is saltwater. But this winter has been exceptional.
"It's definitely tempting for kids to do it," said Glenn Burbank, who witnessed the rescue. "I wouldn't do it. You can see that it's not really safe enough to walk on, you can hear it crunching and stuff."
Houston said the bottom line is everyone should assume "no ice is safe."
"People have just got to stay off the ice, that's the most important thing," he said.
The accident comes amid a brief reprieve from a two-punch arctic snap that sent temperatures in Central Park diving to 3 degrees Monday morning, the coldest recorded temperature in the park in more than a decade. Storm Team 4 says a second cold snap may plunge temperatures even further Friday.
The frigid weather has gripped much of the northeast over the last week. On Monday, a 32-year-old New York City financial analyst was found dead in a New Hampshire hiking area after apparently freezing to death.
