Marquette Water Rescue Training

This summer has been a relatively quiet one in the Marquette area in terms of water safety, but local first response agencies got together for some training this afternoon to keep it that way.

They held a mock drowning exercise at Marquette’s Picnic Rocks area.

The Marquette City Police, the Marquette Fire Department, the Marquette County Sheriff’s Department, local EMS agencies and the Coast Guard have trained together before.

But this was the first time city lifeguards were involved.

Head lifeguard Christina Moffett says they got everything going by identifying the mock victims and then calling the emergency in once the mock victims encountered trouble.

A quiet summer like 2012 underscores the need for training because of few distress incidents to respond to.

Marquette Fire Chief Tom Belt says the lifeguards weren’t the only new participants, either; civilian boaters were also on hand to conduct a search on the water for a floating dummy.

At one point two summers ago, Marquette and Alger counties saw six drownings in just over a month.

Several of those drownings took place at Picnic Rocks.