By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

It happens more often than people might think, but seldom with such tragic consequences.

Every winter, say game wardens and ice fishers, some Mainers find their vehicles mired in slush or with a wheel or more dipping precariously into a break in the ice.

Sometimes, the vehicles slide into a section of open water.

That’s what happened Saturday when Alan Johnson of Lewiston drove his Ford Bronco into an opening on mostly frozen Sabattus Pond. Johnson, 52, perished when he wasn’t able to get out of the SUV as it sank 17 feet, landing on a sand bar.

It’s far more common for people to be able to escape their vehicles as they sink, say those who respond to such emergencies.

Two men did just that on the same weekend that Johnson died.

Inland Fisheries and Wildlife spokesman Mark Latti said vehicles went through ice on Great East Pond in Lebanon and North Pond in Warren on Sunday. Neither driver was hurt.

“I can’t remember another time when we’ve had three in the span of a weekend,” Latti said.

He called ice conditions this winter horrible. “The wacky weather – the freeze-and-thaw cycles – never allowed the lakes to set up properly,” Latti said.

A week before Johnson died, two other men put their vehicles into Sabattus Pond, said Mark Champagne.

Champagne runs Anytime Towing, a Lewiston business that specializes in watery recoveries. On February’s final weekend, his company was called twice to haul vehicles from the pond.

One was a Ford Explorer driven by a Portland man who was ice-fishing. That Explorer went into the water “a stone’s throw” from where Johnson’s Bronco hit the water, Champagne said. Unlike Johnson’s SUV, however, the Explorer didn’t sink because ice hung it up.

It took Champagne’s crew more than three hours to get the Explorer back on solid ground.

The second vehicle was “just an $85 job,” said Champagne, explaining that his truck was able to twitch the vehicle easily back to solid ground. Only its front wheels had sunk in soft ice.

“We do two or three like this every winter,” he said. “We’ll do two or three in the summer, too.”

The walls of his Sabattus Street office are lined with photos of his tow trucks hauling vehicles out of water, and from under ice. The pictures offer silent testimony to the drivers’ mistakes.

Champagne said that in an instance like Johnson’s, where the vehicle is submerged, getting it out will be a big job.

If he gets the work, he said he’ll need to hire a team of divers to hook chains onto the Bronco. He’ll have to send two tow trucks and a crew of four to set up the pull with the right angles, and may need to use extra cables and other equipment.

One of his workers would likely have to cut a channel through the ice for the tow truck’s cable, and then a larger hole at the shoreline for the Bronco to be hauled out.

Recoveries also can vary in their approach. Sometimes, Champagne said, divers will attach floatation devices to the sunken vehicle. Filled with air, the devices lift the truck to the surface where it can then be hauled onto the ice.

That’s when the ice is safe.

Champagne estimated the job of retrieving Johnson’s Bronco could take eight hours or longer and cost between $1,400 and $2,500, depending on divers’ charges and other factors.

“Safety is the thing that drives us,” he said. He won’t allow his trucks on any ice that’s not at least 12-inches think.

Latti said a similar incident last year at Maranacook Lake resulted in a $4,000 bill for the vehicle’s owner.

The state allows people up to 30 days to get their vehicles hauled out of lakes, ponds and rivers. That time frame drops to one day in the case of lakes that serve as public drinking water.

Champagne said Monday that Anytime hasn’t been called to get the Bronco out of Sabattus Pond, at least not yet.

Insurance usually won’t cover the cost of the recovery effort, he said. It will be up to Johnson’s family, or the state, to arrange to have the Bronco removed from the pond.