Experienced outdoorsman Heikki Pöyskö and his friend Marko Laitinen were setting up an ice fishing tent near Kemi’s Vallitunsaari island when a sudden loud crack shattered the calm. It was Wednesday, February 4, 2026—a time when local anglers know the vendace season peaks. The men had drilled holes under their tent for shelter from the wind and started fishing. Pöyskö had just taken a few bites from his sandwich when the massive boom hit. The sound felt and sounded like an earthquake, Pöyskö said. They scrambled out of the tent to find the ice sheet beneath them breaking away. A rift about twenty meters wide opened rapidly. Their large ice floe, 150 meters long and tens of meters wide, began drifting downstream toward bridge pillars, where it would shatter. Pöyskö estimated they had mere seconds to escape. Both men barely made it across the widening gap within half a minute. Their ice fishing tent and roughly 4,000 euros worth of gear floated away on the floe. By morning, the ice chunk had traveled about 800 meters. Most equipment sank to the bottom of the Kemi River, though Pöyskö later recovered a portion with help from a hovercraft. He stressed that surviving was what mattered most. The site was reportedly far enough from the Isohaara power plant, but Pöyskö suspects short-term water flow adjustments from the facility caused unpredictable currents that weakened the ice.
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