News Photo by Julie Riddle A new volunteer for the Presque Isle Township Fire Department tugs a mock victim free from icy waters at a recent ice rescue training for area firefighters and first responders.

EDITOR’S NOTE: To bring you a firsthand account, News staff writer Julie Riddle allowed herself to be dumped into a hole cut into the ice on Long Lake and “rescued” by emergency crews in training.

ALPENA — A face crawls toward you. It’s nervous, tense, a little uncertain.

Cold water sloshes. The eyes blink against its splash.

The face keeps coming.

It’s only training, you tell yourself.

But the dark water pulls at your legs, and the ice is slippery under your gloves as your fingers scrabble to find something, anything, to grasp.

The face comes closer. A thickly gloved hand pushes forward, proffering a fat, yellow loop of what looks like a pool noodle.

“Put your head through this,” the volunteer firefighter says, hands fumbling a little as she helps ease the loop down past your arms.

It’s her first ice rescue.

Not a rescue, really, but a practice, a learning of skills.

A getting ready.

A training, held last weekend on the ice of Long Lake, introduced volunteer and paid firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians to the strategies and equipment used to save someone who needs help on the winter waters of Northeast Michigan.

Men and women from the Presque Isle Township, East Grand Lake, Posen, and Alpena fire departments gathered at Long Lake Park for the better part of two days to learn and relearn the many ways of saving someone who has slipped into ice-covered waters and can’t get back out.

Trainers from Michigan Rescue Concepts, a company offering ice and water rescue courses around the state and beyond, spoke earnestly to trainees, one-by-one leading them through mock rescues, teaching skills and correcting bad habits.

Always take your rope, they reminded their pupils.

Make sure the victim can’t pull you in.

No ice is safe ice.

An inflatable boat, recently purchased by the Presque Isle Fire Department with a $5,000 donation from the Long Lake Improvement Association, rested onshore, awaiting its turn. When they were ready, trainees would practice sliding its open end over the head of a victim, grasping them firmly and sliding them onto the safety of the boat’s bottom.

Several dozen trainees, most clad in waterproof neoprene suits, stood in clumps on the shore, their attention on the ropes stretched across thick ice to where several holes had been cut through to the gray water below.

In each hole, a volunteer bobbed in their buoyant suit, waiting to be rescued.

Talk to them, trainers urged as suited rescuers approached each hole. Tell them your name. Ask if they’re OK. Tell them what to do.

In the hole, the chill of the water kept at bay by the thick rubber of what firefighters call a Gumby suit, you watch the determined face of the volunteer EMT coming to your rescue.

You wonder who she is the rest of the time, when she’s not busy learning how to save people’s lives.

It’s not long, though, and you’re being hauled unceremoniously out of the water and sliding across the ice on your belly.

A rope, clipped to the yellow loop around your back, attaches you to arms attached to people on the shore, more strangers who on weekdays wear ties and wool coats and cowboy boots.

As you zoom toward them, you wonder: Why are they here, hauling you out of the water over and over on a cold afternoon, instead of being at home and warm?

Some of them are serious, intense. They’ve just joined the department a few days ago. This is their first time on the ice.

Some are laughing, teasing, taking the training lightly. They’ve been here before.

All of them, the experienced and the nervous newbies, are teaching their muscles how to throw a rope in a bag, how to crawl across perilous ice, how to slip a yellow loop around someone’s head and shoulders.

Later, when they’re done, the thick suits peel away and from them emerge everyday folks, people you might see on the sidewalk or in the produce aisle.

Until they’re needed on the ice.

They’ll be ready.

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Addendum: On Saturday, members of the East Grand Lake Fire Department responded to an emergency call to assist a man who went through recently-formed ice on Grand Lake.

The man was brought to shore safely.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.