Porter firefighters were kept busy on Sunday, with multiple calls at Indiana
Dunes State Park and Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
The first call of the day, at 9:02 a.m., Fire Chief Lewis Craig told the
Chesterton Tribune today: a hiker via cell phone reporting difficulty
breathing somewhere on Trail 8 from the Nature Center. “He said he’d walked
as far as he could and then started having trouble breathing,” Craig said.
The firefighters’ problem: they were unable immediately to locate the man.
Sometime later he made a second call from his cell and this time he reported
chest pains. Finally, firefighters found the man in the area of Mount Tom,
east of the Devil’s Slide, Craig said. He was transported from the scene by
ATV. The PFD cleared at 11:06 a.m.
The second call of the day, at 10:27 a.m., Craig said: a report of a
17-year-old Illinois girl’s having fallen on the pavement of the parking lot
after passing out. Craig said that girl—whose face “was banged up pretty
good”—was treated at the scene by EMS personnel. She may have been in a
weakened state at the time of her accident, Craig noted, as she apparently
had gone without breakfast and, in the heat and humidity, had only had
coffee and milk that morning. The PFD cleared the scene at 10:46 a.m.
Then, at 4:50 p.m., the PFD’s Dive/Rescue Team was en route to West Beach to
participate in the search for the missing Aurora, Ill., man, when
firefighters received a call from Porter Beach: this one a report of a
missing child. The PFD diverted from West Beach and was en route for Porter
Beach when a follow-up report was made: the child had been found.
So the PFD diverted back to West Beach, where its divers worked for nearly
four hours without success.
While its divers were in the water off West Beach, the PFD was dispatched
once again to the State Park, at 5:49 p.m., after a 7-year-old boy stepped
on hot coals in the west parking lot. Craig said that someone had dumped the
coals in the lot, then covered them in the sand. The boy was treated at the
scene by EMS personnel and then his parents transported him to the
Franciscan Alliance 24-hour ER department on Indian Boundary Road. The PFD
cleared that scene at 6:17 p.m.
Finally, at 8:43 p.m., the PFD was dispatched to Burns Ditch after a boat
was reported sinking near the walking pier. Firefighters located the boat,
which, however, Craig said had been abandoned. The boat’s operator
apparently “hit something big,” Craig added, as its motor looked to have
been “ripped off.”
Custom Search