A red flag with a white line through it waiving in the air is a diver down flag, or scuba flag, and is a flag used on the water to indicate that there is a diver below. Many dozens of law enforcement officers and firefighters from Illinois and Wisconsin spanning at least 10 counties, pulled their emergency boats on shore, with a look of sadness and perhaps, defeat on their tired faces. Not defeated because they didn’t give it their best, but the wrath of Lake Michigan made it very dangerous for first responders to navigate the angry sea.

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They were unable to rescue an Illinois man who was scuba-diving with his wife on board the boat. The man, who has yet to be identified, didn’t come up when he was supposed to.

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At about 11:30 a.m. police were called near Pleasant Prairie and they started the rescue efforts. The Sheriff’s Department soon took over command due to the jurisdictional issues. Sheriff David W. Zoerner, who was at a meeting in Milwaukee with Federal Law Enforcement responded from Milwaukee to the command center at the board launch.

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Zoerner told KCE that the weather was not terrible for the infancy of the rescue efforts, but the waters quickly got worse, and about 5 hours into the rescue attempt, the rescue boats started coming in from their efforts from about six miles out at sea. The Illinois man was exploring the USS Wisconsin.

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The USS Wisconsin was an iron-hulled package steamer built in 1881 that sank in 1929 in Lake Michigan off the coast of Kenosha. In 2009 the shipwreck site was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

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The rescue mission was converted to a recovery mission this evening and rescue personnel are expected to resume tomorrow morning. “Well, that would be a gift from heaven [If we found the man alive],” said Zoerner. “I mean, of course, there’s always hope.

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