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Protective barriers are the key to preventing drowning. That’s the message often repeated at the National Drowning Prevention Symposium held last week in Ft. Myers Beach. WGCU’s Valerie Alker reports.

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Southwest Florida’s beaches have been named among the top ten U.S. travel destinations for 2006. A travel trend survey of Carlson Wagonlit Travel Agency Associates asked travel agents to identify their top bookings for 2006 and Lee County’s barriers island and beaches placed ninth on the list. Other desirable destinations on the top ten list include Las Vegas, Orlando, Honululu, Maui and New York City. The area is collecting other kudos as well. In its January 13 issue Life magazine named Sanibel and Captiva “Gifts from the Sea” one of ten perfect island getaways for quote “families suffering from theme park overload”. Tourism is Lee County’s number one industry = pumping about two billion dollars a year into the local economy.

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Milk Producers do it. So do Cattle Ranchers. Florida Orange juice makers have done it for decades – promoted their products on national television. Now Florida tomato growers are getting into the act – after a couple nasty hurricane seasons took a large bite out of profits. The half billion dollar industry kicks off its ad campaign Monday. WGCU’s Valerie Alker reports.

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A local restaurant owner jumped into a canal, broke a van’s window with a rock and saved a Golden Gate Estates neighbor – whose van had plunged into the canal early yesterday morning.
48-year-old Sandra Ranew thought she was on another road but drove through two reflectors at the end of Shawn Teeters’ road and into the canal in the early morning darkness. She climbed to the back of the van and had about of foot of air left when she called 911 on her cell phone. But she gave the wrong street number to operator Sandra Long.

(hear part of the 911 call)

The crash woke the Teeters. Josi Teeters called 911 with the correct street while Shawn Teeters jumped in to rescue Ranew. He broke the window and pulled her by her hair out of the van, managing to get the panicking woman to the edge of the alligator infested canal. Josi Teeters told the News-Press Ranew is the sixth person who has driven off their street into the canal. The Teeters own Cheeburger Cheeburger in Naples Park and the Key Western Grill in Estero.