Crew must build an ice platform to extract submerged bulldozer from frozen river in Alaska

Updated Dec 30, 2014

A company in Alaska got a not-so-nice early Christmas present when one of their dozers slipped through a frozen river. As you can imagine, the process of getting that dozer unstuck is not very straightforward. If that machine fell through, logic dictates others that come in to pull it out will fall through as well.

According to a report from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Northland Wood Products is having to build more ice just to get the partially-sunk dozer out of the Nenana River. They’ll use the extra ice as a more sturdy platform for the extra equipment needed to pull the dozer back to shore.

The paper reports that the portion of ice the dozer slipped through is often used as an ice bridge. The dozer’s engine and the top of the fuel tank were not submerged and therefore the machine has not been leaking fluids into the river.

If this crew is reading, we’d love to see video of this rescue when it goes down.