DETROIT — Brandi Donley believes a lifeguard would have made all the difference for her 20-year-old son, Brandon Schmidt.
Schmidt drowned nearly four years ago in Lake Michigan at Windsnest Park south of Grand Haven. There were almost no safety features, Donley recalls: no signs advising against swimming, no flotation devices to help someone struggling and no lifeguards to be seen.
“A couple deputies and the sheriff responded, but no one was capable of getting in that water until the fire department got there because nobody was water-safety trained,” she said.
Schmidt was one of at least 117 reported drownings in the Great Lakes in 2018, according to the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, the highest since teams started keeping record in 2010. In 2022, there have already been 62 reported drownings in the Great Lakes, on track to be another high-death year.
Data from the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project shows that May was the deadliest month on the Great Lakes so far this year with 19 drownings. June followed closely after with 16 deaths. As of July 24, there were 12 deaths in July.
Lake Michigan has proven to be the most dangerous lake, with 28 confirmed drownings, but experts say that is at least in part because Lake Michigan has several large cities and tourism destinations.
Illinois' portion of Lake Michigan has had 11 confirmed drownings this year, making it the deadliest stretch in the U.S. Canada's Ontario province shoreline has seen 13 confirmed deaths.
In Michigan, half of the reported deaths were in southwest Michigan, with two each near South Haven and Warren Dunes State Park. Two others were near Bay City, while the remaining deaths happened near Muskegon on the western part of the state.
Experts say the numbers of deaths aren’t likely to come down unless leaders take serious action to prevent drownings.
“When it comes to drowning, every death is one too many,” said Jamie Racklyeft, executive director of the Great Lakes Water Safety Consortium. “We see so many, and it’s disheartening, because they’re all preventable, really.”
Why so many drownings?
The Great Lakes, like any body of water with breaking waves, can form rip currents that can pull people farther offshore before they realize the hazard. Racklyeft himself nearly drowned about a decade ago after he was pulled into a rip current. He had lived in Michigan his entire life, but like many, he didn't know the hazard.
Rip currents often will look like the calmest part of the water. But if they pull a person in, it can be nearly impossible to get out again — especially if that person is panicking or hasn’t been trained on how to get out.
Chris Houser, dean of science and a professor in the School of the Environment at the University of Windsor in Canada, said rip currents form when water that has splashed onto the shore needs a way to return. The water making its way back into the lake moves faster and with more pressure, and Houser said it tends to be fastest at the top where people are most buoyant.
Because drownings are often underreported, people might not be aware of the danger to begin with. Dave Benjamin, co-founder and executive director of the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, said his group works to keep track of them, but oftentimes, they don't make local news. He suspects his own numbers — which show roughly 100 drownings across the Great Lakes a year since 2016 — likely are low.
Most drowning-prevention solutions require support not only from the entities in charge of the beaches but also the users of a given beach.
For example, many beaches use a flag system to indicate the hazard level. A green flag is typically a sign the water is relatively safe, while a red or double-red flag is a warning to stay out. (Some beaches, including those in state parks, use yellow flags to indicate a moderate hazard.)
But those flags rely on regular updating from officials, who may not be doing so regularly, Benjamin said.
Some beaches may update the flags once a day, putting a red flag out early in the day to warn of later hazards, but people can see that next to calm water and think it simply hasn’t been updated, he said.
Or, as Houser noted, people may see a red flag but also see people in the water and assume it must be safe.
Preventing drownings
The most effective way to prevent drownings is to have lifeguards on beaches, Racklyeft said. Having trained professionals who know not only what drowning looks like but also the dangerous spots can make a huge difference.
“They’re the superheroes of the Great Lakes,” Racklyeft said. “Drowning is sudden and silent. A lifeguard can spot it and prevent it, because every minute makes a difference.”
But in many places, lifeguards have been cut from budgets. State parks haven’t had lifeguards for decades, after most were cut from state beaches in 1993, Ron Olson, chief of Michigan Parks and Recreation told The Detroit News.
"There is no plans for guards as we are continuing with our flag system and enhancements to our public education and notice," he wrote in an email Friday. "This includes our new rule to enable temporary closures to the water when the criteria are met."
Most city beaches are also without lifeguards, often because of cost. It’s difficult to say how many beaches across Michigan do have lifeguards at this point, but Racklyeft said the number is exceedingly low.
Benjamin said he would like to see a future in which lifeguards are provided with housing in expensive tourist areas to encourage people to not only become lifeguards but to return each summer.
The lack of lifeguards is why people like Donley have made it their mission to lobby for water safety. She has met with legislators to try to interest them in taking up an initiative like one in Illinois that requires beaches with piers or drop-offs on Lake Michigan to install public rescue equipment.
She recognizes that such an initiative would be much more expensive in Michigan, which has significantly more shoreline.
“From a strictly financial look, programs like this will save money preventing us from having to call in the Coast Guard or bring helicopters in to look for people,” she said. “We won’t have as many drowning calls for first responders.”
In places without lifeguards, having equipment for bystanders can improve safety for both the person drowning and the person trying to help them. Oftentimes, if a person tries to help a drowning victim without any sort of equipment, they can get swept away as well.
Other options include alarm systems that are able to provide first responders with camera views of incidents, or life jackets to loan out.
Racklyeft said his group is working to establish a sort of beach safety-rating system for visitors to be able to more accurately assess potential hazards before even arriving.
The safest five-star beaches would have lifeguards, flotation devices, warning systems and more.
Many water safety activists would also like to see children taught about water safety from a young age, much in the way children are taught fire safety. Donley says children are taught to stop, drop and roll from their earliest days, but similar mantras for water safety could help.
“Flip, float and follow” advises those drowning to flip on their back, float to conserve energy and keep their head above water, and then follow the current to see which way it’s going so they can swim perpendicular to it or signal for help.
Working to change the requirements around water safety has helped Donley to manage her grief. At Windsnest Park, signs warning of rip currents are posted just below a plaque dedicated in Schmidt's memory.
“I know that I probably see things a lot differently than everyone else, but I don't want anyone else to have to see it the way I do," she said. "...These are reasonable changes that we could make, and yeah, they might cost money, but it's time to think about all the lives we could be saving."
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