EDITOR’S NOTE: With the close of the summer Lake Michigan swimming season the question of how to prevent lake drownings remains unanswered. In a two-part series, reporter Kevin Nevers examines the complex interagency beach safety issue. Today: Beach Lifeguards and Police.

By KEVIN NEVERS

In at least six cases since 1995, this was the series of events which led to a drowning at one of the unguarded beaches at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (INDU).

At 10:45 a.m. lifeguards went on duty at the beach at Indiana Dunes State Park (IDSP), 15 minutes before the beach officially opens at 11 a.m. At that time high waves and rip tides prompted the lifeguards to close the beach to swimming and they duly informed the employee at the front gate, who posted a “No Swimming Today” message to give visitors whose heart was set on swimming the chance to leave IDSP before paying the entrance fee.

Or else sometime during the day the weather shifted, high waves began rolling in and rip currents flowing out, and the lifeguards opted at that point to close the beach to swimming and clear the water.

In any either case, the lifeguards remained on duty until the end of their shift at 6:15 p.m., 15 minutes after the beach officially closes.

Then the final, tragic event in the series: either on arriving at IDSP and learning of the closure or after they’d already hit the beach and been cleared from the water, six disappointed visitors decided to leave IDSP and go swimming at one of the unguarded beaches at INDU, either Porter Beach—located immediately west of IDSP and accessible simply by walking there along the shoreline—or Kemil Beach.

All six persons drowned.

Meanwhile, lifeguards were still at IDSP ensuring that no one there entered the water.

“Lifeguards never go off duty,” IDSP Property Manager Brandt Baughman told the Chesterton Tribune. “That’s sort of a misconception. People get a little upset. They think we’re being lazy. The fact is that it’s far more labor intensive to clear the beach than to keep it open.”

Still, Baughman conceded, IDSP, unlike INDU, “has the luxury of having a beach with a large enclosed area.” It also has a public-address system, operated from the Pavilion, to assist lifeguards with clearing the water.

Jurisdiction

One thing the lifeguards may not do, however, is prevent visitors to IDSP from walking west to the conveniently unguarded Porter Beach at INDU. “We no longer have any sort of jurisdiction once they leave our property,” Baughman said.

In fact, the matter of beach safety jurisdiction emerges either as a complicating factor or as an unexplored opportunity. As INDU Superintendent Constantine Dillon told the Chesterton Tribune in an e-mail, the park falls within three different counties, eight townships, and 13 municipalities.

Take Porter Beach, for example, immediately adjacent to IDSP and located within the Town of Porter. Six drownings—more than half of the 11 recorded since 1995 off the unguarded beaches at INDU—have occurred at Porter Beach, and if visitors could only be kept from the water at that beach, on days when rip currents make swimming hazardous, then INDU would have accomplished something.

Indeed, Porter Beach would seem to be ideally situated for a multi-jurisdictional approach.

Consider this scenario: on days when rip currents have forced the closure of the beach at IDSP to swimming, lifeguards there could notify NPS rangers when visitors are seen leaving their beach for Porter Beach; then, if rangers are not themselves in position to clear the water at Porter Beach, they could request assistance from the Porter Police Department.

Unfortunately, that scenario would appear to be impractical.

For his part Baughman said that his lifeguards certainly could in principle—although they do not currently—alert INDU to any obvious migration of visitors from IDSP to Porter Beach. “That’s a great idea. It’s completely conceivable.”

Dillon, on the other hand, has made it clear that, given the size of the park and the range of their duties, rangers would seldom if ever be available to clear the water at any unguarded beach at INDU.

And neither would his own officers, Porter Police Chief Jamie Spanier said. Above all, the PPD just does not have the authority to patrol Porter Beach proper, as its jurisdiction extends the width of the road which leads to the beach—Wabash Ave.—and as far as the high water line. “Everything else is DNR or the National Lakeshore. We’d have to check what legal right we have to keep people out. I don’t think we’d be able to even if we wanted to.”

In any case, Spanier said, the PPD is altogether as resource-limited as INDU is. “We simply don’t have the manpower. We don’t even have a public address system.”

And Spanier points to one other consideration: recalcitrant swimmers. On those occasions when, in response to a drowning, the PPD has been dispatched to Porter Beach, its officers have had the devil’s own time even under those circumstances keeping visitors from the water. “We’ve had officers down there,” he said. “They’ve walked from one end of the beach to the other. And as soon as we’ve tossed the swimmers out, they’re back in the water after we’ve left.”

The question of jurisdiction aside, the Porter Town Council could be thought to have some interest in swimmers’ safety at Porter Beach, inasmuch as it derives an annual income from the sale of permits for the roughly 18 or so parking spaces in the municipal lot there. Every year 500 are sold, for as little as $5 to town residents and as much as $75 to out-of-state visitors.

Information and Education

Brass tacks: visitors to INDU should never swim at one of its unguarded beaches, however fine the weather or calm the water. Lake Michigan is notorious for its rapidly changing conditions.

Visitors who do insist on swimming at an unguarded beach, however, can do two things to even their chances. First, they should educate themselves about rip currents. Second, they should determine whether rip currents are currently prevailing.

Thus English-speakers should read and heed the “Danger: Rip Current” sign posted at beach access points at all of the unguarded beaches. Non-English speakers should find some other resource. Of the 11 persons who have drowned off an unguarded beach at INDU since 1995, seven were identified by the Porter County Coroner as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Korean, and it is unknown whether any of them had the ability to read that sign.

Visitors to an unguarded beach at INDU will not be able to determine at the beach itself whether rip currents are currently prevailing. None of the signage posted by INDU has the capability of carrying that real-time message.

Instead, before they leave home visitors should go to the website of the Chicago forecast office of the National Weather Service (NWS)—at www.crh.noaa.gov/lot—which since July 29 and on its own initiative has been posting rip-current advisories. When conditions for rip currents exist, Porter County will be colored olive green on the map of the region and the advisory itself will appear in the “Lakeshore Flood Statement.” The rip-current advisories are also announced on All Hazards Radio.

Tim Seeley of the NWS said that for several years now the NWS has been posting rip-current advisories in its “Hazardous Weather Outlook” product but this summer opted to place those advisories in “a separate product to highlight them, so they won’t get buried in other information. . . . It was decided that (rip currents are) a significant threat and we should make people aware. There’s been a concentration of rip-current deaths especially in Northwest Indiana and Southwest Michigan because of the number of people who visit the beaches there.”

Among other things, the advisories released by the NWS provide an explanation of rip currents and advice to the swimmer caught in one. They also carry this warning: “Entering the water at unguarded beaches will be especially risky. If in doubt, stay out of the water!”

The NWS will release rip-current advisories through the end of September.

When asked by Tribune whether INDU would consider faxing or e-mailing the NWS advisories to the media—as it currently faxes its weekly beach monitoring reports on E. coli—Dillon said this in his e-mail: “We have no special access to the National Weather Service information other than what is issued to the general public, so the local media could get them as fast as we could.”

But in August INDU did begin including this statement in the beach monitoring reports: “The National Park Service does not close its beaches as a result of water conditions. Beaches remain open and available for public use, and the public is advised to take precautions for their own safety based on water quality, weather conditions, and other relevant information. Please note: West Beach is the only National Lakeshore beach where lifeguards are provided. For information on rip-current warnings visit the National Weather Service’s website.”

The Visitors Center

Visitors have one other choice for education and information: the Visitors Center at the Munson Place commercial park in the Town of Porter, just off Ind. 49, operated jointly by INDU and the Porter County Convention, Recreation, and Visitor Commission.

Both up-to-date news on swimming conditions and general guidance on rip current are available, a staffer said in an e-mail to the Tribune, and the PCCRVC Destination Concierges make a point—“especially when they see children in the family”—of informing visitors that the only guarded beaches in Porter County are the IDSP beach and West Beach. “I cannot answer for NPS or their volunteers” at the Visitors Center, the staffer added.

IDSP, moreover, “has been very diligent in letting us know when swimming is closed,” the staffer said. “When visitors ask about swimming, the Destination Concierges do let them know when swimming is closed and they tell them why. . . . When there are rip currents, the PCCRVC/NPS place brochures that explain the dangers of rip currents on the front desk so that they’re available to the public.”

Eventually, PCCRVC Executive Director Lorelei Weimer said, the Visitors Center may install a “TV-type information service” which would provide immediate updates on any number of issues vital to visitors, including beach closures and rip-current advisories.

At the same time, Weimer said, the PCCRVC is looking to revise its various publications to emphasize the peril posed by rip currents. “We have to make those warnings bold, box them off so they stand apart from the rest of the copy.”

Of particular note, Weimer personally contacted Dillon in mid-August and expressed her desire for the PCCRVC to participate in any beach-safety forum which the two drownings this summer at INDU may prompt. Dillon “is happy for us to be part of those discussions,” she said, “and we hope to meet this fall in preparation for next year’s swimming season.”

“We recognize locally how dangerous the lake is but people outside the area don’t,” Weimer said. “It’s a very hazardous lake and it can change quickly. . . . We all have a role in beach safety. We want people to have a great experience here but we want them to be safe too.”

Posted 9/15/2008