CourtesyDr. Donald LiuCHIKAMING TOWNSHIP, MI
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trying to help swimmers overcome by waves hadn’t allowed his own children to go into the water Sunday, recognizing conditions were too dangerous, said Lt. Martin Kurtz of the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department Marine Division in an interview Monday.
“This gentleman went into the water as a hero”, Kurtz said, “not as someone who didn’t have enough brains to stay out.”
Dr. Donald Liu, 50, surgeon-in-chief at University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, drowned in the waters off Cherry Beach near Harbert, where he was vacationing with family and friends.
He had gone to help a woman trying to assist two children struggling in the current, said Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey. After extending a flotation device to her, and then helping push one of the children into shore, Liu was pulled away from the shore by strong rip currents. The other child made it to safety, but Liu was overcome by waves, Bailey said.
“I’m sure their families feel terrible,” he said.
Rescue attempt
Kurtz said his 8-member team was responding to the initial call at about 10:40 a.m. of “two kids in the water in a kayak incident” when it headed to the beach Sunday.
Bruce McKamey, patrolman with the Chikaming Township Police Department, said when rescue workers arrived, they found the woman and the kayakers -- a teenaged girl and a younger boy, possibly her brother -- were safe on shore, but Liu was missing.
McKamey said he and other officers joined the marine division team to form a line along the beach, based on reports of where witnesses reported last seeing Liu, to search by sight for a swimmer in the surf.
Someone spotted Liu's lifeless form between 50 and 75 yards out, and two swimmers went to retrieve him, with others stationed in the water at intervals between the beach and the farthest two to offer help if their strength waned, Kurtz said. All wore life jackets and used hand and voice signals to communicate. “It’s quite a struggle” to retrieve a swimmer, he said.
McKamey said that when they got Liu back to the beach he and other officers took turns performing CPR until they could transport him to the waiting ambulance. He said he is not sure if Liu ever regained a pulse.
Kurtz said his crew left immediately to help with another drowning. In that case, 41-year-old Anthony Joseph Kelly of Montgomery, Ill., died at Tiscornia Beach in St. Joseph.
Recipe for problems
“We anticipated (Sunday) would be a challenging day,” Kurtz said. He had checked water conditions before reporting to duty, and found strong rip currents, and warm water temperatures.
“Red flags and beautiful weather—that’s a recipe for trouble,” Kurtz said.
Choppy waves in cold weather, or when water temperatures are chilly, don’t attract swimmers, Kurtz said. But hot sun, 80-degree temperatures and waves -- “it’s a perfect storm for us,” Kurtz said.
People ignore warnings because the water is so inviting. But those unfamiliar with Lake Michigan underestimate the danger, rescue workers said. “There’s incredible force there,” Kurtz said.
“It’s extremely frustrating” he said, to know that people will either ignore warnings or will arrive at the lake unaware of its dangers.
Todd Taylor, assistant chief of the Chickaming Township Police Department, said he grew up on the lakeshore, and shares Taylor’s frustration. “We have tons of literature out there, signs up (explaining the danger of rip currents) and even at the beaches with red flags waving, he said. Rip current warnings are available online and with local weather reports, But, he said, “people still swim.”
“People go out in rough water when they shouldn’t be out at all,” he said.
Taylor, himself, ran into trouble two years ago when he was out on the lake in such conditions trying to rescue a child.
“I was caught in a current. Not only did I have the current, but there were waves going over me, over me, over me” from different directions he said.
“It quickly wears you down. I had a life jacket on, but someone had to rescue me,” he said.
The child did not survive.
“Lake Michigan is nothing to play with,” Taylor warned. Under those conditions, “there is no safe depth” for swimmers, he said. ”Even knee deep water is dangerous.
Sheriff Bailey agreed. “You’ve got to educate yourself about Lake Michigan,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how good a swimmer is. Those currents are very, very dangerous.”
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