By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
CENTRAL PARK — Any Parks Department employee who works near one of the city's nearly 50 public lakes or ponds will tell you that park-goers lured by the wintry wonderlands venture out onto the ice on a daily basis — even though it is strictly verboten.
"You see baby stroller tracks on the lake," said Danh Ong, who has been a grounds technician for two years at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, next to the lake. "People on the ice is an everyday thing. I yell, 'Get off the ice.' The first thing they always say is: 'No English.'"
But tourists are not the only culprits, according to several of the 60 Parks Department employees attending an ice rescue training session at Central Park's Lasker Rink on the snowy Friday morning.
Pet owners who run after their unleashed dogs are a big problem, according to Anne-Marie Vaduva, a gardener for Central Park's Ramble, a 38-acre stretch of paths and hills in the park.
One such woman fell through the ice last month when running after her dog, who scurried onto Turtle Pond near Belvedere Castle. The dog was rescued by another park-goer who used one of the red ice ladders that line every lake and pond, according to Vaduva.
An ambulance came to warm the woman up, but she didn't need to go to the hospital, Vaduva said.
Turtle pond is small but deep since it is a remnant from one of the Croton Aqueduct reservoirs, Vaduva noted.
"We would not let people onto the ice unless it was five inches deep. It takes several days of extreme temperature without water movement," explained Michael Crescenzo, director of training for the Parks Department, who was overseeing the ice rescue demonstration.
With the temperature variations, New York has been seeing in recent years, that kind of ice is "very rare."
The Parks workers practiced using ice ladders and large nails to help propel them toward the victim, using either one ladder, or for trickier situations, when there's more breakage, two ladders to distribute the rescuers weight more evenly.
The last time a Parks employee ice rescue took place was at the Prospect Park Lake near Wollman Rink on December 30, 2003, according to a Parks spokesperson.
Ed Juda, who works at Central Park's Great Hill, which is not too far from the Harlem Meer, said that ice walkers are "mostly teens or people testing out Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. It's not smart."
In Juda's home state of Minnesota, people wouldn't dare venture out on such terrain. "They drive on Lake Superior, but only once the ice is six inches thick," he said. "They know." Here, "people don't understand there are natural springs in the lakes. There is flowing water."
