INDIANAPOLIS — Around this time of year, some people may look at the thermometer and feel despair; however, other people may see an opportunity.
Sean Baird and his friends couldn't wait to clear out a patch on a nearby pond, throw on their hockey skates and pass the puck around. Before they did all that, he said they took precautions.
"I had a tape measurer, tape on the rebar, and was pounding it in. I got to about 4 or 5 inches and said that has to be good enough," Baird said. "For it to be this cold consistently, that's what kind of triggered us to be like it's probably good for like ice skating."
However, Tim Griffin, with the Carmel Fire Department, said that's not always true.
"No ice in Indiana is safe. It's really because we have these cool-downs and warmups. We never really get, I feel like, with our winters the really thick ice," Griffin said.
He said there are many reasons this could be dangerous.
"It does not take long for hypothermia to set in, for your hands to stop being able to work, for you to stop being able to swim," Griffin said. "Trying to get back out of the ice is difficult. You can't get a grip to pull yourself out."
It's not only people who need to stay off the ice.
"Pets go out on ice. We try and go out after them. We ask you not to do that," Griffin said.
Carmel firefighters spend a lot of time training for ice rescues and making sure they're prepared to handle those dangerous temperatures.
"We will gear up in those suits as fast as we can normally on the way to the run or before we leave here. We will have two of us if we know we are heading to a situation like that," Griffin said. "We train on how to maneuver on the ice trying to continue to not break it."
To prevent it from going that far, he said it's better to be safe than sorry.
"We live in a place where there are so many public ice-skating rinks inside and out, so I'm always going to suggest to go to one of those public ice-skating rinks," Griffin said.