An off-duty Winnipeg firefighter pulled a woman to safety Tuesday morning after her car tumbled off a city bridge, landing on a partly frozen river.

Firefighter Dale Kasper witnessed the accident on the North Perimeter Bridge and then made a dramatic rescue.
(CBC)

Dale Kasper, a firefighter in Winnipeg and East St. Paul, was driving on the North Perimeter Bridge, near Henderson Highway, around 7:30 a.m. when he witnessed the accident.

A white Jeep-type vehicle in front of him appeared to try to pull out to pass when it suddenly lost control and began to skid, Kasper said.

The vehicle went up a snow bank on the bridge's railing, then fell over the side of the bridge onto the river roughly 15 metres below.

"It went perpendicular to the railing, went up onto the railing, teetered for a moment, and then went over," Kasper told CBC News.

Kasper called 911, then jumped out of his own vehicle and ran down to the river, which was mostly frozen, but not completely iced over in the middle.

He kicked in the window of the vehicle, which had landed upside down on the ice surface, and dragged out a 23-year-old woman, the vehicle's only occupant.

"It was a vehicle on its roof and a little bit of flattening to the roof of it, and we had to break the window to get her out. There was some water in the vehicle," he said.

The woman's head was submerged, Kasper said, but he wasn't sure for how long. He couldn't get her seatbelt off, so he and another man used a knife to cut it off.

The SUV gets pulled up the river bank.
(CBC)

Kasper performed CPR on her until emergency officials arrived. 

The woman, identified as Lisa Klassen, sister of Olympic speedskater Cindy Klassen, is in critical condition in hospital.

Rick Los, who helped keep the woman warm with his coat until paramedics arrived, said he travels over the bridge every day and has previously seen vehicles hit the guard rail.

He worries the hard-packed snow left behind by plows over the winter helped launch the Jeep over the railing.

"If that can happen to her, it could happen to anybody," he said. "It would be nice if they removed it."

Provincial officials said it is possible the snow bank contributed to the accident.

By late Tuesday morning, plows had cleared the snow away.