Dog rescued by firefighters after falling through ice on lake

Firefighters in Fairfax County, Virginia, pulled a struggling, whimpering dog from slipping beneath the ice on a Reston lake on Wednesday morning. The 75-pound chow named Angel fell through the ice on Lake Thoreau at around 8:40am.





Kristina Evans heard the dog as she got her child ready for school. "I heard the dog and I stopped and I said, 'That's a distress call,'" Evans said. She rushed to her porch and saw Angel struggling to climb back on the ice. Then she called 911.





Firefighters arrived to find her struggling in vain to get out of the freezing water and howling in fear and discomfort. “When we arrived on scene, we had to go down a bank with snow on it, and the dog was about in the middle of the canal," said Rob Blesetti of Farifax County Fire and Rescue.


YouTube link. Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department's Facebook video.

"We saw the dog was half in the water, half out, clinging to some ice, so we knew we had to get in there," said Joe Gangler of Fairfax County Fire and Rescue. Crew members got into ice commander suits and pulled Angel from the lake less than 10 minutes after they got the call for help, authorities said. Medics evaluated Angel on the scene. She wasn't hurt and was returned to her owner.