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Cars fall through ice at Wisconsin winter festival

Posted at 4:24 PM, Feb 07, 2016
and last updated 2016-02-07 16:24:21-05

More than a dozen parked cars broke through the ice Saturday at a winter festival in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

The partially submerged cars and their removal gave festival-goers something else to watch besides the annual snow sculpting competition.

With thousands in town for the annual Winterfest and the U.S. Snow Sculpting Competition, parking was difficult. So drivers took advantage of the open space.

“It was a great spot to go and park,” says car owner Matthew Denko. “I wasn’t really concerned because I seen all the people out there. I seen the cars on there. So, for me, it was, ‘okay, if there’s multiple cars out there then I can put my car on there.”

A tow company was called that specializes in pulling vehicles out of the water. After a few hours, they had half the vehicles out.

“The divers indicated that most of them are resting on the ice that they were on top of. So the weight of the vehicles was pushing them down at certain angles,” said Lt. Ed Gritzner with the Lake Geneva Police Department.

Lake Geneva Police say no one was injured.