Video shows cars fall through ice during racing event near Montreal

Dramatic video posted on social media shows two cars falling through the ice on the St. Lawrence River during a race south of Montreal.

Footage of the weekend crash has been widely shared online since Saturday. The incident happened during the Kahnawake Ice Racing Series, which took place in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake.

Footage from a surveillance camera installed inside one of the vehicles that went under the ice shows how the event unfolded.

During the competition, the two cars were seen chasing two other cars as they began to dive through the cracked ice.

The drivers of the car that captured the footage quickly got out of the sinking car. The driver, Patrick Renault, was filmed walking over the hood of the car to get to safety. Vincent Noel was the second driver who fell into the river.

The drone video also captured the terrifying scene from the sky.

Briar Lawrence, president of the ice race, wrote on Facebook that everyone got out of their cars safely.

“Nobody was hurt,” he wrote in an online post.

Racers gather around a submerged race car on the St. Lawrence River.

“We all know the risks we take once we get on that ice, and everyone understands that this sport that we love comes with these kinds of risks.”

Crews returned the next day to retrieve the wrecked vehicles, Lawrence said.

Two cars crashed into the St. Lawrence River during the Kahnawake Ice Race.

The competition driver tells CTV News that he has been competing in the event for 35 years and has never seen anything like it.

“It was just a terrible accident,” Derek White said. “To have two cars completely submerged under water was just crazy.”

White said he watched from a distance as his friends scrambled to get out of their cars.

“They were kind of in shock, they were terrified,” he said.

Ice thickness was not a factor in the crash, according to White.

“We checked the ice last night, it was 16 inches in one corner, 14 inches in the other three corners,” he said. “We won’t go on ice unless it’s 10 inches thick.”

White said the cars used in the event are heavy, about 5,000 pounds each, and their proximity to the ice could have contributed to the crash.