PRESQUE ISLE — Three days before, it was open water.

A new layer of ice that laced its way across an expanse of Grand Lake only a few days ago wasn’t strong enough to hold a snowmobile and three men, visitors from downstate who had come north for a weekend of ice fishing.

Saturday afternoon, the East Grand Lake Fire Department received an urgent call about a person who had gone through the ice. Locating the victim was difficult, at first, according to Chief Ron Fournier, because the men were from out of the area and weren’t able to identify their location to 911 operators.

Launching the department’s airboat from the Presque Isle beach house, rescuers located the men between Three Sisters Island and Grand Island, a stretch of thin ice where open water had sloshed days before.

Returning to shore from a day of fishing, the men, two of them on a snowmobile pulling the third on a sleigh, broke through the ice, dumping one of the men into the water.

When rescuers arrived in the airboat — designed to be driven on ice, snow, water, or land — the other two men were prostrate on the ice, holding their friend by his arms to keep him above water.

The man had been in the water about half an hour and was losing consciousness as the airboat arrived, the chief reported.

“He’s lucky we got there when we did,” Fournier said.

One responder in a buoyant rescue suit climbed from the airboat into the water with the victim and got a rope around him so he could be hauled onto the ice and from there onto the boat.

The two other fishermen who had been holding him up were able to crawl to the airboat, and all three were taken safely to shore, where the victim was taken by ambulance to MidMichigan Medical Center-Alpena.

Fournier believes the man was treated and released.

The snowmobile, he said, will have to be retrieved from the bottom of the lake.

Most years, Fournier reported, the lake — usually busy with ice fishermen on winter weekends — freezes over uniformly. This winter’s uneven weather has left some areas safe, with seven inches of ice underfoot, and others highly dangerous.

Portions of the lake — between Three Sisters Island and Grand Island, off Lotus Pond near Grand Lake Pond, and at the north end of the lake, near the dam — have had open water until only a few days ago.

The newly formed ice is made more dangerous, he said, because of the recent snows, making it impossible to tell how thick the underlying ice has become.

Ice fishermen who don’t live on the lake’s shores would be wise to talk to a local, Fournier suggested, before venturing out onto the ice.

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