Fire department conducts their annual ice rescue training

Firefighters Jason Karr, left, and Quentin Combs are pulled out of the water Tuesday during Jefferson City Fire Department training in McKay Lake. For the next few days, firefighters will practice tactics for still water ice rescue. Each shift practices being the victim and the rescuer.
Firefighters Jason Karr, left, and Quentin Combs are pulled out of the water Tuesday during Jefferson City Fire Department training in McKay Lake. For the next few days, firefighters will practice tactics for still water ice rescue. Each shift practices being the victim and the rescuer.

Several firefighters and fire trucks were at McKay Lake on Tuesday as part of the Jefferson City Fire Department's ice rescue training.

The fire department will conduct ice rescue training throughout this week to help prepare firefighters.

Division Chief of Training Jerry Blomberg said while a person falling through ice is uncommon in Jefferson City, it is considered a high-risk event.

"If you look around town, there's a lot more standing bodies of water than you think about, like McKay Lake and Hough Park Lake and all those personal ponds," he said. "There's just so many of them that we want to be prepared for it because a victim in the water doesn't have much time. We want to make sure we can get in the water and get them out as quickly as we can."

The department tries to hold the training annually, but weather dictates whether they hold the training outside or in an indoor simulated environment. With temperatures mostly below freezing over the last couple of weeks, Blomberg said the environment was perfect for outside training, which is more realistic.

Blomberg warned Jefferson City residents to stay off the ice, especially as temperatures continue to fluctuate.

"As the weather warms and the ice changes, what you may think is thick ice may not be thick ice," he said. "Ice changes so quickly that it's really just best to stay off of it."

It is illegal inside city limits to skate on public waterways, said Todd Spalding, director of the Jefferson City Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry. This type of city ordinance is common, especially in the Midwest, he added.

People who want to ice skate can visit the Washington Park Ice Arena at 711 Kansas St. in Jefferson City.