A young boy and his mother are being commended by the London Fire Department for the way they handled a nerve-racking winter weather incident.
On Thursday just before noon, emergency crews were called to the area of Highbury Avenue and Sunningdale Road, where a child was stranded atop a frozen pond.
London Fire Department Incident Commander and District Chief Jamie Britton was on the scene and explained the circumstances leading up to the rescue.
Britton says the boy had been out with his mother and another young family member tobogganing beside their home. Due to the slickness of the snow and ice, the child’s sled traveled farther than it was supposed to, and he came to a stop on the surface of a pond.
“The mother was very smart in telling her son to not get off the toboggan. She told him to stay put, not move around, and then called for us,” Britton said.
The four-year-old stayed seated on his sled until emergency crews arrived. The rescue team was able to get a throw rope out to the young boy and pull him back to safety.
“The mother made an excellent decision not to go out on the ice after her son. He was safe, that toboggan basically spread his weight out. The integrity of the ice probably wasn’t great, so she did an excellent job not going out there,” Britton added. “It could have been a whole lot different if she tried to go out there to get her child.”
The London Fire Department reminds members of the community to stay away from bodies of water during times of significant snow and ice accretion.
