UPDATED: Nearly 50 people rescued after ice sheets break away on Upper Red Lake

UPPER RED LAKE -- Witnesses say it happened in about five minutes, too quickly for anyone to do anything about it. They say it has happened before but never quite like this, the cracking and twisting of ice that stranded about 50 people Monday on floating sheets here at Upper Red Lake, where no one was hurt.

“S---,” Travis Mauer had said to his friends as the water widened around them, their fishing shack, their four-wheeler and their three caught fish. “What are we supposed to do?”

Emergency calls started coming in about 9:50 a.m. from people stranded on the south side of the lake near Rogers’ Resort and Campground.

Chris Freudenberg, who co-owns the resort, said the cracks formed last week and then closed, covered by wooden bridges as a precaution. The ice buckled and the cracks reopened Monday from warmer-than-average weather and a south wind. The chasm of open water eventually widened to about 300 yards.

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