This is the dramatic moment workers at an ice rink in China rescued their colleagues who had fallen through a frozen lake.
Footage shows the workers trying to pull some 10 colleagues out of the bone–chilling water under a layer of thin ice.
It’s said that the workers had been sent to retrieve barriers sunken into the water.
The ice rink workers had been sent to a frozen lake to retrieve sunken barriers at a Beijing park
It’s claimed that the chained barriers had been submerged by water after ice started melting
Mr Sun, manager of Beijing Shichahai Tourism Development Company, spoke to local newspaper Beijing News.
Mr Sun said about 20 workers had been sent to Shichahai, a lake in Beijing, to pull up the sunken safety barriers on December 18.
‘The weather was a bit warm and the ice was melting, so our chained safety barriers had fallen into the lake, and they had be to be retrieved before the weather turned cold again,’ said Mr Sun.
He assumed the ice was too thin for a team of 20 men to walk on, half of the workers plunged into the water.
Mobile phone clip shows the workers pulling their colleagues out from the water using safety floats and long sticks.
It’s reported that no workers were injured.
Around 10 workers struggle in bone-chilling water after falling into the frozen lake while working (left). Colleagues have to pull them out using ropes and sticks (right)
Workers are quickly dragged out of the water by their colleagues. None of them are injured
Mr Sun explained they wanted to set up the ice rink as soon as possible as he noticed a lot of people were skating on frozen lakes by themselves.
‘It’s quite dangerous (for them to do so) if there is no safety equipment to protect the ice skaters.
‘We would like to open the rink around Christmas Day, so less people would choose to skate on the lake unmonitored,’ he added.
However, web users believed that the ice rink company wanted to make money disregarding the weather condition and safety precautions.
‘He just wanted to earn money as soon as the lake was frozen, greedy,’ said ‘yanlier81’.
‘It’s too early, the ice is not thick enough and they already started setting up an ice rink,’ commented ‘guodongyouni’.