RUMFORD – Rookie firefighter Corey Mills got his first taste Tuesday of what it’s like to suit up for an ice-water rescue. Only he wasn’t gingerly balanced on ice floes while dressed head to toes in a red neoprene “Gumby” cold-water rescue suit.

Listening to Lt. Rob Dixon explain how to use the department’s 88-pound rescue sled, Mills was standing atop it inside a station bay, “rescuing” drowning simulation victim Justin Tibbetts, a junior firefighter.

“This is exactly why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Dixon said to a handful of firefighters trying different victim-lift techniques with a strap attached to the sled’s two center rail poles, and scrunching Tibbetts into awkward positions.

Shortly before the rescue refresher, the Maine Warden Service urged people to be careful and patient before venturing onto frozen bodies of water.

Due to the season’s warm temperatures, many larger lakes and ponds have yet to ice over. Some smaller ponds and waterways in central and northern Maine have an ice covering.

“This is the worst that people have seen it in a long, long time,” Warden Service spokesman Mark Latti said Tuesday in Augusta. “It’s just a bad year.”

Ice conditions vary greatly throughout the state. While ice conditions may be safe in some spots, it can be very dangerous in others, he said.

“Obviously, we can’t ban people from going on the ice, but, it’s extremely dangerous right now. We are urging people to use extreme caution before venturing out onto any ice covering Maine’s waterways,” Latti said.

The ice fishing season opens on New Year’s Day.

Wardens know people will be out and about, ice fishing and snowmobiling. But, they hope, Latti added, that people will exercise caution and check the ice.

This winter, Maine has seen a cycle of rain, then snow, then thaws and freeze-ups.

“Much of the state is still snow-free, and, much of the state is ice-free. If people are going out there, I think the challenge this year is finding ice,” Latti said.

But for firefighters, who frequently are the first responders to ice- and snowmobile-related accidents, the challenge is safely retrieving victims and bringing them back alive.

Standing between the rescue sled handrails, in an opening between the runners, which places the firefighter directly on the ice surface, Dixon continued to teach.

“The victim is going to be bobbing like a dead fish,” Dixon told Mills, who reached down to secure Tibbetts. Two firefighters wearing life jackets stood back, both holding 300-foot-long lines attached to Mills and the sled.

Besides discovering that they needed to do some minor maintenance work on the sled, the group learned that a litter fits perfectly within the sled’s two hand rails.

“It’s good to refresh ourselves, check it, and make sure it’s good to go,” Deputy Chief Ben Byam said.