La Crosse Needs A First Step Meeting
As expected, the death of Luke Homan has been ruled a drowning. According to the La Crosse Police Chief Ed Kondracki, ““This is clearly a binge drinking-related incident.” Another “guest” at the same party Homan attended was also found wandering in Riverside Park with a blood-alcohol of .26.
We want to make sense of the inconceivable, so we invent serial killers. Yes, there have been other deaths. Yes they were young, otherwise healthy men. The fact that there are young men drunk in downtown La Crosse shouldn’t surprise you. UW-L professors have shown that on a typical Friday night, there are over 1,000 men fitting that profile. That’s just the students. This was Oktoberfest, multiply that by a factor of, what, three? five?
La Crosse hasn’t sat by idly. I notice that volunteers will be patrolling the riverfront this second weekend of Oktobefest to keep people from falling in. But there has been resistance from the local tavern league. There are a lot of bars in La Crosse, most of them operate on wafer-thin margins. Any changes could put a lot of people out of business, so there is foot-dragging.
Yes, the main drinking drag in La Crosse is Third Street, which tells you how far it is from the Mississippi. So some drunks wander down by the river for some reason. I was a drunk there and I never did, but that’s just me. But Eau Claire has its Water Street. How many deaths in the past ten years there? Shoot, the Drunkest City in the U.S. has its Water Street, I would venture to say that there are at least 1,000 drunk young men down there on a Saturday night. Ask Mandy Jenkins. Madison is on an isthmus in the middle of three lakes, why aren’t people dying there every weekend? Up and down the Mississippi, cities and towns have entertainment along the river (Laclede’s Landing in St. Louis comes to mind ) and yet just La Crosse has this ghastly record.
There is a problem in La Crosse, but it’s not a serial killer.
We should pass a law. Maybe Kathleen Falk will promise to go to La Crosse weekly to meet with city leaders. We could put serial numbers on drinks so we could trace them back to those who sell them illegally.
While watching last night’s news, I learned that LaCrosse has a LEVEE, not a natural shoreline, near the downtown area. Levees result in water depths and currents that are unnaturally exaggerated. I was also surprised that the LaCrosse levee has no barrier preventing individuals, sober or drunk, from falling into the man-made current and depths of the Mississippi. I’m willing to bet that LaCrosse requires fencing around all private swimming pools in the city. Why do they not have a barrier along their levee? If a drunk fell into Lake Mendota or Waukesha’s stretch of the Fox River, that person would find herself a bit wet, but not in much danger. In LaCrosse, however, it would be a different, albeit tragic and familiar, story.
Yes there is a levee. Hence the shuffling throng waitin’ on the levee for the Robert E. Lee. Seriously, though, the Mississippi is essentially an interstate highway. You can’t just walk onto I-94, there’s at least one fence to climb. However, having lived in La Crosse for the better part of 10 years, I can say that you can’t just walk up to the shore and fall in. At least, downtown you can’t. There is, or at least used to be, a buffer zone between the land and the water. See this:
http://kaypoe.the-webplace.com/lax/lax-riversidebridge-kp.jpg
It is as hard to fall in the Mississippi as it is to fall out of the upper deck at Miller Park. Yet people achieve both when they drink too much. You could achieve absolute security by building a 30 foot wall the 2000 mile length of the but …