It is highly dangerous and widely discouraged to walk on frozen rivers. But that hasn’t stopped some people from doing it anyway.
Videos and news footage from this weekend have shown people walking and sliding across the frozen Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers, near Point State Park and the North Shore in Pittsburgh.
“It’s a little scary, I ain’t gonna lie,” a man told TribLive news partner WTAE after walking upon the frozen Ohio River. “You can’t go too far, you don’t want to fall in. But, stay close enough, and you can do whatever you want.”
Near and record-breaking colds the past couple of days have caused Pittsburgh’s three rivers to freeze over. Ice on the rivers range between 5 and 8 inches thick, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard earlier this week shut down the Allegheny River to river traffic until March 1.
Another man told WTAE he doesn’t recommend people walk on the ice, but “you have to be smart about it.”
“You can’t go out too far, you know. The river’s moving, so wherever it’s moving, you do not want to go,” he said.
On Jan. 28, a 47-year-old Pittsburgh man led police on a slow, 5-mile pursuit on the frozen Allegheny River. Wanted for trespassing at the former Veterans Administration hospital site, he fled to the river near the Highland Park Bridge and walked on the ice to Harmar, where he was arrested.
Pittsburgh Police didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night, but authorities have said previously that people should not be walking on the ice. Thickness and variability of thickness of river ice make it dangerous.
There have been no reports of people falling through the ice this week.
Falling through, though, can have dangerous and even fatal consequences.
More than 40 years ago, two young boys were believed to have fallen through the ice on the Allegheny River in Tarentum. They were never found.
And on Thursday evening, a West End woman died after her car veered across the Parkway East near Downtown, hit a snowbank and submerged into the Mon River.
Eric Capets, a Pittsburgh EMS paramedic and River Rescue dive instructor, told reporters Friday that cold river temperatures can affect the human body “within a couple minutes” of being submerged.
“Your core temperature stays pretty warm — but your hands? You lose a lot of dexterity,” he said.
