Officials urge water safety ahead July 4th holiday

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – Officials are reminding people to practice water safety ahead of the Fourth of July weekend.

DJ York, the commander for the Codington County search and rescue team, said rescues typically increase over the holiday weekend.

“Of course, you get a lot of new people that might not ride jet skis and operate boats all the time and they’re out and they just hop on one and go for a ride,” York said.

Search and rescue teams, along with Game, Fish and Parks officers, will be out on the waters this weekend making sure everyone is safe and following the laws, according to York. He said the biggest problem they have is making sure people are wearing lifejackets.

“If they’re involved in a drowning or something, it usually could be quickly resolved or not happen at all if they have their life jackets on, that’s a big thing,” York said.

He also said the nighttime is when most of the drowning and emergency situations occur and to take extra precautions if you’re in the water at night.

“It’s a little more risky and that’s usually when we have most of our incidents, where it’s after dark or someone fell off the boat and they couldn’t see them. Just try to be safe if they’re doing any night time driving or any sort of swimming,” he said.

Lake County Sheriff Sarina Talich said Independence Day is one of the busiest times out at Lake Madison as well.

“Normally in the summertime, our lakes’ population doubles because a lot of people come up to either vacation or they have vacation homes up here,” she said. “We do have some people that do live lakeside all year round, but a lot of people will come up over the Fourth of July specifically to celebrate on the lakes.”

Talich stressed the importance of staying sober while operating a motor vehicle, especially a watercraft, during the holiday weekend.

“It diminishes your capacity on being able to make good choices,” she said. “If you’re gonna celebrate, stay put, don’t be driving motor vehicles. That would include your golf carts, your ATVs, UTVs, boats, just stay put right where you’re at; it’s safer for everybody involved.”

Talich did say that drinking isn’t the only factor that leads to accidents on busy holiday weekends at the lake, negligence also plays a role.

“Me personally, I would not be out on on the lake during the Fourth of July here,” Talich said. “It’s not worth it for an accident to happen in my opinion because there’s a lot of negligence and people don’t pay attention, don’t care, just wanna have fun.”

If people are operating vehicles and taking their boats and jet skis out on the water, the Lake Poinsett Association says people should make sure they spread out across the water and not crowd other watercraft.

“There’s plenty of room for motorists to do what they wanna do, jet skiers to do what they wanna do and, you know, fishermen out there, you don’t have to be right next to a boat when you’re out there water skiing or enjoying the lake,” LPA President Scott Ross said.

Ross also said there is a 70% chance of thunderstorms for Thursday and that people should be aware of the weather while they’re out on the water.

“If you’re out there and you see something in the horizon that might be brewing, it’d probably be smart to get off the lake and there’s some areas around the lake that you can go to, for storm shelter,” he said.

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