Things got scary on Lake Erie after 10 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2009, when ice fishermen suddenly found themselves stranded on an ice floe that broke away in mid-40s temperatures.

OAK HARBOR (WTOL) - Today is the 10-year anniversary of a massive Lake Erie ice rescue during which one fisherman died and more than 130 were rescued in Ottawa County.

Ice fisherman Leslie Love fell through through the ice while on a snowmobile just offshore of Crane Creek State Park during the rescue and was pulled out. The 65-year-old New Albany man died on the way to the hospital.

Things got scary on Lake Erie after 10 a.m. on Feb. 7, 2009, when ice fishermen suddenly found themselves stranded on an ice floe.

The day's warm weather caused the nearly eight-mile wide chunk of ice to come loose and float about 2,950 feet from the shoreline near Oak Harbor.

Countless stranded fishermen, like Corey Comar, were left calling for help, cold and afraid. He said he did feel a little hopeless, but knew hope was coming.

"We're very fortunate for the Coast Guard. They did a wonderful job today," Comar said that day.

"When you have a mass rescue like that, it can be a very chaotic scene. You're trying to look out for everybody. And unfortunately, nobody involved on the ice floe out there knew the specific number of people involved," Dave French of the U.S. Coast Guard said at the time.

The ice floe happened when the warming temperature and southerly winds caused the ice to break and float away.

Then-Ottawa County Sheriff Bratton expressed anger at the time at fishermen, whom he said should have known that conditions were turning dangerous. The temperatures on that Saturday had risen into the 40s. The ice thickness was more than 15 inches, but the conditions were not sustainable for good ice.

“There’s no section of the law about stupidity, because they could all be arrested today for that,” Bratton said at the time.

A crack had been open in the ice for about a week, but fishermen said they had been crossing it on plywood. The day's warm temperatures caused the piece of ice to crack and come loose, Coast Guard officials said.

Several watercraft and helicopters from Toledo and Marblehead helped in the rescue, but some people were trapped on the ice for up to four hours.

That night, a U.S. Coast Guard hovercraft scuttled along the shoreline that evening as it made a final safety sweep. It was the end to a long day and a massive rescue operation, where years of Homeland Security training were put to the test.

A massive, costly effort was made to save the ice fishermen.

Sheriff Bratton said the total spent on the rescue cost nearly $250,000.