In the first nine years of Lake Sidney Lanier’s existence, 60 people lost their lives in the waters of the man-made lake.

They drowned while “swimming, fishing, boating, wading, skin diving, skiing or trying to save someone else who was in trouble,” according to an account from 1965 in Harold Martin and Franklin Garrett’s book, “Atlanta and Its Environs.”

More than 40 years later, the numbers haven’t changed much. In the last nine years, 57 people have drowned in Lake Lanier.

As of this Fourth of July weekend, considered a time when the danger of drowning is at its peak, only one person has died in Lake Lanier this year — a June 15 fatal accident in which a man jumped 30 feet off Bell’s Mill Bridge. But officials braced for the worst.

Last year, four people drowned in Lake Lanier during the three-day Independence Day holiday.

“The Fourth of July is usually the hardest to work,” Lt. Tyler Dorsey, a member of the Hall County Fire Department’s Marine Rescue Unit, said earlier this week. “It’s going to be a long weekend.”

Dorsey’s three-person crews include two rescue divers and a paramedic. The boat is equipped for any medical emergency but has a lot of territory to cover.

Records and reports of drownings in recent years show that many victims are not originally from the area. Many could not even swim.

Dorsey said the common aspects he’s seen in drownings are “ignorance and carelessness.”

Among the most common causes: “Trying to swim further than you’re capable of swimming, not wearing a life jacket, jumping from a bridge,” Dorsey said.

“If you can’t swim you’d be foolish to go out in a swimming area without a life jacket,” he said.

Yet he sees it all the time.

Dorsey recalled encountering a young man who admitted he couldn’t swim bobbing along many yards from the shore on a soccer ball. On another day, rescuers found a woman and her three children, none older than 4, floating along on flimsy inflatable rings some 300 yards off the shore and into the main channel of boating traffic. None could swim.

“She said she was just seeing if she could make it to the other side,” Dorsey said.

Some people swim out to landmarks like buoys on a dare, then find themselves suddenly exhausted and go under.

“There are a lot of daredevils,” he said.

But the majority of the drownings occur close to the shore.

“They are around the parks,” he said. “There are more people swimming outside the parks than in the parks, but most of the problems are around the parks.”

In recent years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has posted bilingual signs warning of drowning dangers. But it seems many still ignore the warnings, officials say.

The worst year for drownings in Lake Lanier in recent years was 1999, when there were 11. Last year, five people drowned in the lake.

Dorsey said there have been times when his unit was able to revive a drowning victim, though they are few and far between. The waters of Lanier are cold enough that resuscitation of someone who has spent many minutes underwater remains possible.

“It happens every now and then, but you’ve got to be there fast,” he said.