Alejandro A. Alonso Galva
Brandi Kochera keeps a lookout for boaters in distress at the UW Lifesaving Station.
Tragedy often leads to change and UW Lake Safety is no exception. The century-old program — often called “Harvey,” after one of its longtime supervisors, Harvey Black — was created in 1909 after two UW students drowned in Lake Mendota.
Since then, Lake Safety has rescued thousands of swimmers, surfers, and boaters — including 516 people in 2016 alone.
But a death last May is prompting change, says Marc Lovicott, spokesperson for the UW-Madison Police Department. A UW lifesaving boat was returning from Governor’s Island when it struck and killed Yu Chen, who had been windsurfing. A medical physicist, Yu Chen was an instructor for the Hoofers Sailing Club.
The collision sparked an investigation by the Dane County Sheriff’s Office and a review of Lake Safety by UW-Madison Police. That review recommended moving oversight of the program to UWPD from its current department at UW Environment Health and Safety.
“We noted that Lake Safety served in a first responder capacity on Lake Mendota. So our report concluded that the unit would operate most effectively under the leadership of a first responder agency — our agency,” says Lovicott, “To that end, we’ve been working for the last six months to implement changes, to ensure the unit is ready for the 2018 boating season.”
The department says it will not release the full report to the public until all other investigations into Chen’s death are concluded. The investigation by the Dane County Sheriff’s Office was turned over to the Dane County District Attorney’s Office, which has not announced whether it will file criminal charges.
Lake Safety will now be called UWPD Lake Rescue and Safety. Police say the public likely won’t notice many changes, which will be more internal in nature, involving administrative and procedural oversight and training. The agency will also nurture its partnerships with other first responders on Lake Mendota, including the Dane County Sheriff’s Office and the Madison Fire Department.
“As a first responder entity and a triply-accredited police agency, our record keeping, training, and policies are among the best of the best in the nation and we believe bringing Lake Rescue and Safety to UWPD will help accomplish many of the recommendations our review outlined,” Chief Kristen Roman said in a statement.
Some sailors fear the move will turn the rescue boat crew members who work for Lake Safety into police officers. That could make swimmers and sailors, fearing repercussions from police, reluctant to call for help.
“If they resist the temptation of having the lifeguards doing double duty as cops, then it’s not a problem,” says Jo Reis, a longtime member of Hoofers Sailing Club. “It would be a sad day to see the rescue squad stuck giving out tickets.”
Lovicott says that staff at Lake Rescue would not include police officers and it would remain solely a rescue operation.
“We will not be out there patrolling or enforcing laws,” he says. “It is essentially in existence to make sure the community is safe on the water. Should they need help, we’ll be there for them.”
Lake Safety’s two rescue boats launch from the UW Lifesaving Station between the Edgewater Hotel and James Madison Park on Lake Mendota. Built in 1967, the structure is fitted with a watch tower and cameras to survey the lake. There’s also a repair garage and crane to lift out rescue boats for repairs. The civilian staff works 10-hour shifts monitoring for people in distress, conducting rescue missions, and closing the lake when the weather becomes treacherous.
This is not the first time Lake Safety will be housed under the campus police department, according to Sean Geib, an assistant supervisor with Lake Safety. In the ’70s, UW police patrolled the water on jet skis and rescue staff were deputized. That won’t be the case this time, Geib says.
Lake Safety has the difficult task of serving a community with 40,000 students, 10,000 square acres of water and four miles of campus shoreline, Geib says. He says the move will provide more support for training and funding.
“We are unique and sometimes people don’t understand what we are,” Geib says. “We aren’t the police or the fire department. But we are a first responder on a lake that has the biggest inland boat fleet in the country, but does not have a Coast Guard presence.”
