Over the past 22 years, Chocolate Lake resident Mike Evans says he’s counted six deaths at the popular Halifax beach location.
At one time, Chocolate Lake was a rock quarry, says Evans, who owns a home across the lake from the beachfront.
He believes a pattern is emerging now and the Halifax Regional Municipality who owns the beach property need to do something to make the area safer.
“With quarries and the way they are mined you end up having long flat surfaces and then sudden drops offs,” said Evans.
The depth of the lake can be a bit deceiving to inexperienced swimmers and those not familiar with the lay of the land he says, and points to his own property line along the waterfront.
Six feet offshore you can be waist-deep in the water and just a few feet down the shoreline, there might be a steep drop-off where a swimmer couldn’t touch bottom and this can startle an unsuspecting swimmer, says Evans
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Evans said he was outside Wednesday when emergency responders were on scene to rescue the 22-year-old man who had been swimming with friends, but witnesses say he went under the water and failed to surface for several minutes.
Paramedics and firefighters did perform CPR before rushing the man to hospital, but he didn’t survive his injuries.
The man was identified by friends on Facebook as Sidharth Assija — an international student who recently moved to Halifax.
A group has launched a fundraising page to help pay for the return Assija’s body to his parents in India.
In 2018, a 28-year-old man from Toronto also drowned in the lake after falling off his flotation device.
Evans and his wife said they have reached out to their district councillor in the past, requesting proper signage to be posted at all entryways to the beach, notifying swimmers of the steep drop-offs and conditions of the artificial or man-made lake.
He also noted that they reached out with the same request this week following the drowning on Wednesday.
“Failure to act on it now, now that we know there is a pattern of these kinds of occurrences, would be a really poor choice for the municipal folks to ignore or avoid acting on,” said Evans.
Global News reached out to the councillor for the district and the municipality for comment on this story, but have not heard back at this time.
There were no lifeguards on duty at the time of the drowning this week.
According to a sign posted at the beach, lifeguards are only on duty at Chocolate Lake between July 1 and August 31.
More to come.
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