Ore boat deckhand apparently drowns at industrial dock
A crew member died after falling from a dock into the water while retrieving personal belongings, according to this archived public-safety report.
Archive illustration: a Great Lakes freighter on open water. This image does not depict the incident.
A deckhand on an ore boat docked at an industrial facility apparently drowned on Monday after falling into the water.
The victim was identified as Sara Murawski, 30, of Kinde, Michigan.
The accident occurred at 3:45 p.m., after Murawski had disembarked the ship and was retrieving her personal belongings on the dock. The Burns Harbor fire chief said Murawski was believed to have been reaching for an item when she slipped from the dock and fell approximately 15 feet into the water, possibly striking her head on the ship on the way down.
Murawski had just completed a tour of several weeks aboard the Wilfred Sykes and was preparing to go home for the holidays, according to the fire chief. She was not wearing a personal flotation device at the time of the accident and was not seen to surface. A witness entered the water in an attempt to rescue Murawski but was unable to do so.
Dive teams from Burns Harbor, Porter and Chesterton responded. The Porter team entered the water after the Wilfred Sykes was moved away from the dock to clear space for the search. Murawski was recovered in 32 feet of water, next to the dock wall and approximately 10 feet from where she had fallen. Officials said she had been in the water for 42 minutes.
Murawski was transported by a U.S. Coast Guard vessel to a Burns Harbor ambulance. Emergency personnel performed CPR while she was taken to a regional hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Officials said she had sustained a head contusion and that her body temperature was 82 degrees when she was recovered.
The county coroner’s office and Indiana conservation officers were investigating the accident at the time of the original report.