Wardens warn ice across Maine remains unsafe

SANGERVILLE – Despite repeated warnings that the ice on Maine’s bodies of water is unsafe, reports of snowmobiles breaking through the ice continue.

“If we don’t get some cold weather it’s going to be tragic,” Game Warden Michael Morrison of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife predicted Monday. With Monday’s snowfall, Morrison said the weak spots in the ice will be covered and he worries that more snowmobilers will fail to use caution.

On Sunday, Shane Perkins, 17, of Abbot was lucky to escape the bone-chilling waters of Harlow Pond in Sangerville after the snowmobile he was driving plunged into the pond. Perkins had been en route to retrieve some ice-fishing traps when the ice broke under him, according to Morrison. Perkins told Morrison that he jumped off the sled and onto the ice before the vehicle submerged.

“He’s very lucky,” Morrison said Monday. Had Perkins, who was traveling alone, fallen into the water it would have taken a long time to find him and it likely would have been a recovery operation, according to the game warden. That effort could have exposed rescue workers to the same fate, he said.

Perkins isn’t the only

one whose snowmobile has been planted on the bottom of the state’s water bodies this season, according to Morrison.

“There’s a pile of them all over the state,” Morrison said, including two that fell through the ice on Pushaw Lake in the Glenburn area and another in Ebeemee in the Brownville area.

The snowmobile owners have until 30 days after the ice goes out in the spring to remove them if the body of water is not a public drinking water supply and the snowmobile does not pose a threat to public health and safety, according to Morrison.

If the vehicle does pose a public threat, the owner must remove it within 30 days after the incident.