Eyewitness video captured the frenzied moments after a Georgia ferry dock walkway collapsed Saturday, killing seven people.
The video, published Monday by The Associated Press, shows people clinging to the broken walkway to keep themselves out of the water.
Seven people were killed and several others hospitalized after the dock collapse on Sapelo Island, a sparsely populated Georgia barrier island about 40 miles south of Savannah.
More than 40 people were on the walkway when it collapsed in the center, leaving people clinging to flanks that were still attached to different docks.
The video, captured by Icy White of Atlanta, shows people on dry ground tossing life jackets to others floating away in open water.
The Sapelo Island visitors-turned-rescuers jumped into the water to reach some people, while others passed children back in a chain, witnesses said.
“There was no EMS that was there,” White’s cousin Darrel Jenkins told The Associated Press. “We were the EMS.”
The U.S. Coast Guard and local emergency responders eventually joined the effort, but their arrival was delayed because of Sapelo Island’s isolation. The lightly populated land is separated from the mainland and only reachable by ferries, which are operated by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Sapelo Island is home to a small Gullah-Geechee community, direct descendants of enslaved people who were forced to labor on an island plantation.
Many people were visiting Sapelo Island on Saturday for Cultural Day, a celebration of the island’s traditions and culture. The victims were identified as Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75; Cynthia Gibbs, 74; Carlotta McIntosh, 93; and Isaiah Thomas, 79, of Jacksonville, along with William Johnson Jr., 73, and Queen Welch, 76, of Atlanta and Charles L. Houston, 77, of Darien, Ga.
The dock walkway that collapsed was built in 2021, after a lawsuit forced Georgia to make the area more accessible for disabled people. Authorities were befuddled after the collapse.
“It is a structural failure,” Georgia DNR Commissioner Walter Rabon said. “There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that but we’ll see what the investigation unfolds.”
With News Wire Services
