Amphibious vehicle sinks in Lipno Dam after accident on ice

A routine maintenance run on the frozen Lipno Dam turned into a complex salvage operation on Tuesday after an amphibious grooming vehicle broke through the ice and sank. The accident, a rarity in the Czech Republic involving such specialized machinery, required a team of professional and volunteer firefighters to carve a channel through the frozen lake to retrieve the wreckage.

The incident occurred near Frymburk, where a local volunteer group known as “Ledaři” was preparing the surface of the “Ice Highway.” The crew was operating an eight-wheeled amphibious machine roughly 40 meters from the shore. The vehicle is designed to float, making it theoretically safe for work on thinner ice, but the specific dynamics of Tuesday’s accident overwhelmed its buoyancy.

According to those on the scene, the machine’s plow blade caught a deep fissure in the ice, slicing through the surface and dropping the vehicle into open water. While the driver escaped without injury, the recovery effort quickly complicated matters. By the time the crew returned with retrieval gear, the vessel had tilted dangerously, taking on water.

Firefighters from the Frymburk station were called in to manage what became a delicate extraction. To bring the submerged machine back to land, rescue teams had to use chainsaws to cut a continuous channel through the ice, dragging the heavy equipment toward the bank.

The subsequent inspection of the recovered hull revealed a frustrating culprit behind the sinking. The damage to the vehicle’s underside was likely caused by a large rock frozen solidly into the ice. Volunteers believe the stone was thrown onto the freezing surface by a visitor earlier in the week—a common method used by tourists to test ice thickness—which unwittingly turned into a hazard capable of piercing the machine’s hull.

The loss of the equipment is a significant blow to the volunteer unit, who finance their own operations and machinery without municipal budget support. While the ice between Frymburk and Lipno nad Vltavou remains connected, the specialized vehicle is now out of commission, leaving the completion of the Frymburk oval track uncertain.

Local authorities noted that while the ice was 13 centimeters thick at the time—sufficient for the machine but not yet for large crowds—incidents like this serve as a stark reminder of the unpredictability of natural ice.