There are very few homes right on the lake, but a woman who lives across the lake heard the man calling for help. With binoculars, she could see his equipment.  Patten happened to be just one mile away at Hoffmaster State Park, he said. "I could not get right to him because the ice was like a sponge."

Patten called in the man's location and members of the Norton Shores Fire Department wearing ice rescue equipment reached the man.

There was "actually open water on some parts of the lake," said Joseph Kinnucan, Norton Shores Fire Department Deputy Chief.

"He was getting to the point he could not grasp but he got my throw rope around him," said Patten.

"He was not able to utilize his muscle function," said Lt. Benjamin Chartier of the Norton Shores Fire Department, who added that the man used an ice fishing spud to keep from going completely under the water. "Sitting across the ice and he was holding on to that to help support him."

Howard Peiffer, the former Palm Coast fire chief, in 1975 witnessed the engine being built when he worked as a firefighter for the Lake Mohegan Fire Department. He worked there 25 years and retired in 1992, he said.

"It was a big difference from the one that it replaced because it was more powerful and it got around a lot easier," he told the News-Journal in earlier interviews. "It maneuvers very well. It's always had a good pump on it — a 1,000-gallon per minute pump."

Palm Coast Fire Chief Mike Beadle and Peiffer have said the engine would be used mostly for ceremonies.

Peiffer has a long history with the engine, he wrote in an email.

City officials say the proposal addresses a critical need to replace aging fire apparatus that costs too much to maintain and do it in a way that doesn’t break the Fire Department’s budget. Slamon has said the money for the lease payments would come from savings from reduced maintenance costs and from money now being used to pay off the recent purchase of two Pierce fire engines. Those payments end in 2018, and the lease payments begin in 2017.

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