The week before Christmas, the radio crackled on board the Lady Caroline, a dining cruise ship that operates along Cleveland’s lakefront.
From his vantage point on the water, Captain Joseph Slusarski often acts as an informal lookout, relaying information to first responders when trouble arises. On this day, he heard a report of a man in the water near the East 9th Street Pier.
“I was like, 'Well, I guess we’re gonna go out to East 9th and see if you can find a body in the water,'” he said. “But before we left it was canceled. He had been rescued.”
That incident turned out to be an unsuccessful suicide attempt. But Slusarski said he hears roughly a dozen emergency calls each year tied to accidents — overturned boats, swimmers in distress and people overwhelmed by wind and waves.
He said many emergencies involve people misjudging conditions, particularly wind.
“People take that for granted,” he said. “They think, 'It’s just a lake and I’m only a mile offshore.' But Lake Erie kicks up pretty quick.”
Drownings close to shore
On a calm day, Lake Erie can look inviting from Cleveland’s shoreline — a wide, blue expanse, the water shimmering in the sun. And plans are underway to dramatically reshape the city’s lakefront, including the reimagining of the soon-to-be-vacated Cleveland Browns stadium site, meaning Northeast Ohioans are likely to take even more advantage of the lake in the near future.
But as access expands, water safety experts say the city is confronting a growing problem: More people are entering Lake Erie without the skills, experience or protection needed to stay safe.
Roughly 100 drownings happen each year across the Great Lakes, and about 20 of those are in Lake Erie. Experts say fatalities have climbed since the pandemic, as more people turned to outdoor recreation.
The danger came into sharp focus this summer, after a paddle boarder drowned off the shores of Mentor’s Headlands Beach, two young men were swept away in a current in Bay Village’s Huntington Beach and a man fishing off the rocks at Edgewater Yacht Club fell into the water. Many incidents happen close to shore, often after lifeguards leave for the day. Alcohol and risk-taking are frequently involved.
Captain Andrew Ferguson is the Founder and CEO of Argonaut, an education nonprofit focused on aerospace and maritime careers, and serves as the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Water Safety Consortium, a water safety organization. He said the problem runs deeper than weather or equipment.
“Despite having our entire northern border being Lake Erie, despite many of our communities having waterfront, beachfront, we really haven’t made that connection,” he said.
He and others believe Cleveland’s history plays a role. Decades of industrial pollution, Cuyahoga River fires and repeated warnings about bacteria kept generations away from the water.
Teaching safety before access
Now, local leaders are trying to reverse that legacy.
Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne launched the Freshwater Institute two years ago to help the region reconnect with its rivers and lake.
Program director Emily Bacha said the Institute has partnered with and expanded AquaMissions, a program that teaches fourth graders in Cleveland and Warrensville Heights basic water safety — including how to check depth, recognize conditions and stay calm if something goes wrong.
“We know that water safety and swimming competency are really foundational when we’re thinking about building a water culture here in Northeast Ohio,” she said. “Learning to swim in a pool is different than learning on our rivers or lake.”
Community groups are filling gaps, too. The Cleveland-based nonprofit SYATT connects Black youth and families with outdoor recreation, including swim lessons and scuba training.
SYATT Co-Director Ebony Hood said that work challenges long-standing myths.
“We hear a narrative a lot… about Black kids being afraid of water. And we find it to be the exact opposite," she said. "They’ve been open, willing, maybe even more competent in their skills.”
Still, barriers remain. Lifeguard shortages limit how many pools can stay open and for how long, and many families don’t have transportation to reach the few pools that are operating. All that drives more people to swim in the lake.
When prevention fails, rescue becomes the last line of defense.
After a series of drownings more than a decade ago, the Bay Village Fire Department, west of Cleveland, instituted a formal Rescue Swim Program in 2015 that trains its firefighters as open-water rescue swimmers. Since then, the program has recorded dozens of confirmed saves and only a few deaths, and it has served as a model for neighboring departments on the Westshore.
Fire Captain Jim Walts said their crews can sometimes reach a victim in as little as 10 minutes. Over the past decade, that speed has saved lives.
“It is certainly worthwhile for departments that are on the Great Lakes that have these issues," Walts said. "There are resources out there.”
A question of readiness
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources is considering re-appropriating funding for water safety education and marine patrols, potentially leaving Ohio even further behind neighboring states like Michigan and Indiana, said Ferguson of the Great Lakes Water Safety Consortium.
And even while Cleveland Metroparks and Lake Metroparks provide lifeguards on Lake Erie beaches, years of underinvestment in lifeguards and safety equipment at other Great Lakes access points put people at risk, at a time when more people are spending time on the water.
“You'll see many beaches now that put up signs that say 'swim at your own risk' because the legal advisors on those public access points ... feel that by putting a lifeguard on, or having a floatation device present, they're accepting responsibility,” Ferguson said.
With more people coming to the water each year, experts say preventing the next drowning may come down to what Cleveland teaches before anyone ever gets there.
