2014
April 25: Flint begins using the Flint River as its primary source of drinking water.
June 6: The first recorded Legionnaires’ disease case in the Genesee County outbreak is discovered. It’s unclear whether that first case involved a patient at McLaren Regional Medical Center, but a hospital spokesperson later told the Detroit News that McLaren first noticed an uptick in Legionnaire’s cases in the spring of 2014, a year before Bertie Marble entered the hospital.
August 2014: McLaren said this is when it found “a low level of legionella” bacteria in its water system. The hospital said it “put immediate measures in place that were successful in controlling the situation.”
End 2014: Michigan Department of Health and Human Services data shows a 60 percent increase in deaths in Genesee County attributed to pneumonia and influenza in 2014, though the numbers, and the outbreak itself, were not publicized. There were 92 deaths in 2014, compared with 56 in 2013. (The state won’t reveal how many of those deaths were pneumonia versus the flu, saying the data remains under review).