Unstable ice has been a factor in the deaths of more than 30 people across the northeast and Great Lakes region this winter, including two 40-year-old men in New York State.
Conesus Lake is the westernmost of the Finger Lakes; and one of the smallest -- it’s about a mile across, and eight miles long.Cameron Copeland looks out over the water, reminiscing about his brother, Chris.“He was always outside," he says. "Between scuba diving, skiing, wakeboarding, snow skiing, snowboarding, riding dirt bikes, riding four wheelers.”Chris was 40 years old. He had shaggy brown hair and a wide smile, and he lived in a house right near the shore of Conesus Lake.One of his favorite winter activities was snowmobiling across the flat, frozen surface.On February 11th, Chris and his friend Jason Fluet got a ride home from a local bar around 3:00 in the morning. The next day, Chris didn’t show up to his job as a taxi driver. His brother wasn’t too worried at first.
“Knowing Chris," he says, "he could have been off in Florida or could have been off on vacation somewhere. Chris would randomly go somewhere.”But 24 hours after he was last seen, Cameron Copeland still hadn’t heard from his brother, and his friend Jason Fluet was missing too. Cameron contacted the police.Livingston County Sheriff Tom Dougherty says they immediately filed a missing person report. He says when they checked the house, they did not find Chris, but they did find a clue to where he had gone. One of Chris' snowmobiles was missing.By morning, a police drone had picked up snowmobile tracks going out on to the lake. A few hours later, they recovered two helmets from the ice. A neighbor told police he heard a snowmobile engine start up around 3:00am, take off, and never return.By then, Doughterty says, "all the pieces were lining up, really putting them in the lake."
That night would have been a dangerous one to snowmobile on the lake. The north end was frozen, but the ice started to break up near mid-lake. It was dark, and there was a light snow falling, making it harder to see soft spots and thin ice.“We figured that their plan was to do a quick loop and come right back, but they got off course and went too far south," says Doughtery, which would have put them on thin, mushy ice or even open water.The sheriff’s office launched a massive search with dozens of law enforcement – police officers and firefighters on the ice and in boats, divers combing the frigid lake.Copeland’s family hunkered down in a house nearby, with a big window looking out over the water. Cameron says the waiting was hard. “We just kind of kept each other’s minds busy, kind of hoping that he wasn’t in there," he says.
Jason Fluet’s family was in Phoenix, Arizona when they heard what was happening. His mother, Sandy, says she heard the news from a member of their church. “After I got off the phone with him," she says, "I just kept screaming and screaming and screaming.”Like Chris, Sandy’s son Jason was 40, had a daughter, and loved being outdoors.Both men were recovered from the lake on February 22nd, eleven days after they went missing.The families and the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office say the biggest contributor to this tragedy was likely an incredibly warm winter.There have been more than 40 ice-related accidents this winter involving snowmobilers and ice fishermen. Copyright 2017 Great Lakes Today. To see more, visit Great Lakes Today.
