TOL Hungary

A floating ice-floe

January 10th, 2008 by robertnemeth

10 people are stranded on a floating ice-floe on Lake Balaton, came the news a few days ago. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Of course, it was a hoax, but it resulted in the biggest rescue attempt ever around the lake. Some already call it the joke of the year.

But how did it start? Some workers of a hotel on the lakeside saw three (yes, three) cyclists on the ice of the lake. After a few minutes, when they looked at the same place, they did not see them any more. They called the police, the ambulance, and without hesitation (and I would even add, without thinking it thoroughly through) they started the rescue attempt.

However, when the helicopters took off and also the divers approached the lake, they were already searching for ten people on a floating ice-floe. Still no one knows how the story was turned into this direction, not to mention that it would be a kind of physical sensation having floating ice on a lake in this area.

After a few hours, someone realized that it would be worth checking the traces of the cyclists (by this time they learnt that there had been only three “disappeared” cyclists). There they saw that there are also traces showing that they had left the ice. Besides, no disappeared person was reported. So, they stopped searching.

Nevertheless, there is one optimistic approach of the story, as officers imply. The whole story can be treated as an exam of the rescue system - and it passed.

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