ABC57 News in South Bend, Ind. covers all of Michiana including St. Joseph, Elkhart, Kosciusko, LaPorte and Marshall counties in Indiana and Berrien, Cass, Van Buren and St. Joseph counties in Mich.
Emergency calls related to drownings have been on the rise of late in Polk County, with nearly 80% of the incidents over the past year involving children ages 1 through 9, according to data provided by Polk County Fire Rescue.
But despite the county’s largest city wearing a name like Lakeland, it’s not natural bodies of water where the majority of these 911 drowning calls are coming from.
“It’s (swimming) pools,” said the county’s Fire Chief Robert Weech.
Between Jan. 1 and April 30, emergency dispatchers responded to 18 drowning calls – the most in that timeframe in a four-year span.
There were 49 calls in 2020 compared with 42 calls in 2019. And while not all of these calls resulted in fatalities, Polk ranked near the top in 2019 in drowning deaths statewide.
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