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Officials work to keep boaters safe on Labor Day
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BATON ROUGE - On a holiday like today, the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries describes themselves as the State Police of the water.
"Labor Day weekend is usually one of our busiest. It's kind of the end of the year big bash for people for the recreational boating season," described Sgt. Randy Lanoux. "We'll have 500 boats out here at least."
Besides checking for drunk drivers on the water, LDWF agents are there to keep you safe.
"Mainly we're going to be checking to make sure everybody is operating safely and doing what they're supposed to be doing. Make sure they have the proper safety equipment, the required safety equipment," said Lanoux.
"Everyone's been pretty well-behaved so far."
But that wasn't always the case. In the late 90s to early 2000s, Stg. Lanoux experienced firsthand 16 fatalities in 6 weeks. He called it the "deadliest waterway in the nation."
Nearly twenty years later, there have only been two fatalities in 2019.
"We really started cracking down on the law and since then we've had vast improvements."
Lanoux says their safety checks may be inconvenient for some but have saved hundreds of lives.
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