Romanian rescuers tried for several hours to find three men who allegedly fell into the iced waters of a lake in Romania, in what appeared to shape up as a national tragedy, after a medical helicopter crashed into the same lake in late - 2014, leaving all four on board dead.

A call made on Wednesday afternoon, January 7, around 17:00, at the 112 emergency number service, which announced that three men allegedly fell through the ice into the Siutghiol lake, near the Black Sea resort of Mamaia, in Romania, determined a large scale rescue mission on the premises, according to Mediafax.

Several crews of the Emergency Situations Unit “ISU Dobrogea”, as well as ambulances and emergency rescue crews belonging to the emergency medical service SMURD, firefighters and divers went to the site and started searching the frozen lake to find the three men. Several boats were deployed on the lake and a helicopter was called to help with the search, which went on for several hours.

In the end, this turned out to be a false alarm. One of the three men called the authorities and said they were all fine. The three men, who were out ice fishing on the lake, apparently got scared when they saw the rescue units coming to the lake and ran away. They only realized the full scale of the rescue operations when they saw the news on TV, PRO TV reported. The rescue mission was called off after the police identified the three men and determined that they were ok. The authorities will investigate how this happened and whether anyone will have to pay for the extensive rescue mission and the resources used in vain.

This was the second time an incident occurred on the Siutghiol lake near Mamaia. In mid-December, a helicopter belonging to Romania’s emergency rescue unit SMURD crashed in the Siutghiol lake with four on board. The rescue operation was inefficient and the four crew members died. They survived the crash, but either drowned or died of hypothermia.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: SMURD Galati on Facebook)