Crowd Rescue Two Students From Freezing River in Northeast China

Two students who fell into a freezing river were rescued through the collaboration of kind-hearted people on Tuesday in Harbin City, provincial capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

The students ventured onto the ice of the Songhua River for fun, but ended up falling into an ice hole ten meters from the riverbank.

The crowd on the bank was worried about the two students. A teenager boy even jumped onto the ice to help them. However, because the ice was too thin, he could only sit on it or put out his hand to grapple them.

Meanwhile, security guards who were patrolling nearby hastened to the site.

"We rushed to the river and found that some people and children had already tried to save the students. But the ice was so thin that we were afraid they would also fall into the river. So we took off our clothes and collected several clothes from the crowd to make a rope, and throw the rope into the river," said Zhang Jinxi, a security guard.

The students got rescued through the collaboration of the crowd eventually. Security guards took them to their security booth to warm them up.

"As soon as they got rescued, we wrapped them with our clothes and took them to our booth to warm them up, helping them took off the wet clothes and change into dry ones. We wanted to call their families, but they were cramping with cold and unable to speak. After around six minutes, they recovered gradually and told us how to contact their parents," said Zhang.

The students said that they were frolicking on ice therefore failed to notice there was a hole in it.

Police warn that with spring returning and temperature rising, ice on the river is thinning day by day. It is dangerous to walk onto a thawing river.