A new system of color-coded flags at popular entryways to Duluth's Park Point waterfront is now warning beachgoers when conditions are ripe for
dangerous rip currents.
Every morning by 10 a.m., a firefighter at the Park Point fire station will check the National Weather Service surf zone forecast.
The flags will be posted at the Tot Lot parking lot at 12th Street, at the Lafayette Community Club and near the children's ore boat play area near the parking lot at the Duluth Beach House.
Green flags will remain flying during safe situations. Firefighters will hoist yellow flags if there is moderate or developing danger. Red flags will be raised to warn beachgoers to stay out of the water.
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The flags are a low-tech but high-profile solution in an often high-tech world, said Duluth Mayor Don Ness, when he hoisted the first warning flag -- green -- Tuesday afternoon at Lafayette. "They are elegant in their simplicity. But this will save lives here on Park Point."
The new system will run June 15 through Oct. 15, said Dean Packingham, a senior meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Duluth. It's the same period during which forecasters issue a daily surf zone forecast for waterfront conditions.
The same system is used at oceanfront beaches and was developed locally by a coalition that included the Duluth Parks and Recreation Department, Duluth Fire Department, American Red Cross, Sea Grant and the National Weather Service in Duluth.
Capt. Brent Consie of the Duluth Fire Department, which responds to local water rescues, said he expects a dozen or fewer red-flag days each summer. Consie said the rip current warning effort will stop short of ordering people out of the water but that a red flag should be a signal that most people should not be in the water.
Rip currents are the occasional pull of water away from shore caused by large waves that hit the sand and then roll back into the lake, often through breaks in sand just off shore. They can be strong enough to wash strong swimmers away from shore and have been blamed for dozens of deaths along the Great Lakes in recent years, including one in Duluth in 2003.
Experts say it's relatively easy to escape the clutches of a rip current, if you can keep your wits, by swimming parallel to shore until you are out of the current, then swim back to shore. Victims tend to panic, however, and struggle to swim against the current straight back to shore, quickly tiring and losing the fight.
