DARIEN, Ga. – All seven people who died Saturday when a gangplank collapsed on a Georgia barrier island were in their 70s, except for one woman in her 90s, the coroner said Sunday.
An estimated 700 people gathered on Sapelo Island, about 70 miles south of Savannah, to celebrate Gullah Geechee history and its unique blend of African culture and American life at the time of decline.
McIntosh County Coroner Melvin Anderson identified the body on NBC affiliate WSAV of Savannah as Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75, of Jacksonville, Florida; Cynthia Gibbs, 74, of Jacksonville; Charles L. Houston, 77, of Darien, Georgia; William Johnson Jr., 73, of Atlanta; Carlotta McIntosh, 93, of Jacksonville; Isaiah Thomas, 79, of Jacksonville; and Queen Welch, 76, of Atlanta.
Authorities said about 20 people fell into the water when a gangplank leading to the island’s Marsh Ferry Dock collapsed shortly before 4 p.m., as the ferry was docked, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference Sunday.
Crowds at Saturday’s celebration were large enough that officials requested additional ferry crossings to take guests back to the mainland, Rabon said.
He added that many bystanders, including some of the 40 state workers who were on the scene to deal with the additional crowd, jumped into the water as part of multiple attempts to rescue people in need of help.
Houston, one of the people who died, was a Department of Natural Resources chaplain who attended the ceremony because he believed in “preserving the Gullah Geechee heritage and protecting at-risk communities,” his daughter, Heather Houston-Meeks, told NBC News.
Houston-Meeks and her father found themselves in a stream of people expecting to board the ferry soon, but she found herself in the water in the blink of an eye before making it safely to shore, she added.
Some of her father’s co-workers told her he had stepped in, she added.
“I was told that when we got into the water, he immediately jumped into action, looked out for other people and rescued other people,” Houston-Meeks said. “Until the last moment, he served others and cared for others.”
“A catastrophic failure”
Rabon blamed the “catastrophic failure” of the crossing and said an investigation was ongoing to determine the cause of the failure.
Asked whether overcrowding on the gangway carrying the ferry Annemarie could have caused the ship to collapse, Rabon said: “I’m not ruling out any possibility at this point.”
Part of a gangway that collapsed Saturday afternoon remains visible Sunday on Sapelo Island in McIntosh County, Georgia.Lewis M. Levine / AP
The facility was rebuilt in 2021 and required almost no inspections, although it underwent regular inspections, Rabon said. On Sunday, photos from the scene showed a collapsed gangplank attached to the quay on one side and submerged on the other.
Cellphone footage showed a chaotic scene in the milky waters of the western side of the island as civilians in street and Sunday clothes waded toward victims and tried to pull them to shore, where others performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Authorities said at a news conference that of the half-dozen other people who survived but required medical attention, three remained in critical condition in hospital on Sunday.
A spokesman said the U.S. Coast Guard sent two flight crews to help search for survivors Saturday night. Divers were dispatched from the nearby Camden County Sheriff’s Office to search the murky shadows of the gangway structure and railings, which were partially submerged, according to the office’s social media posts.
It was unclear at the time whether any people were missing in the water, but on Sunday authorities said everyone had probably been accounted for.
On Sunday, Department of Natural Resources spokesman Tyler Jones said ferry service to Sapelo Island would resume on Monday using an additional dock.
Fight for the future of the island
Sapelo is separated from the rest of Georgia by the Duplin River and the coastal sounds created by the fingers of the Atlantic.
The Department of Natural Resources controls and manages almost all of the land on the island, which came into state hands after a series of transactions with its owner, Annmarie Reynolds of the Reynolds tobacco family, about half a century ago.
What remains is a black enclave, Hog Hammock, created by her late husband RJ Reynolds to consolidate the island’s inhabitants, which survives as a rare outpost of the Gullah Geechee people, who were the center of Saturday’s celebrations.
Their culture has continued to incorporate elements of indigenous African traditions since the first followers were forcibly removed from Africa and brought to the southeastern United States against their will and enslaved on plantations.
It is unclear whether any of those killed in Saturday’s collapse were Gullah Geechee men.
The deaths occurred as residents of Hog Hammock, also spelled Hogg Hummock, fought the McIntosh County government over what they believed was an attempt to force them off the land with taxes and policies that would allow for luxury housing.
Despite the community’s existence on the National Register of Historic Places, some residents, like JR Grovner, believe the county and state are subverting the local Gullah Geechee population through new regulations and neglect.
Grovner, who splits his time between Hog Hammock and the mainland, said he complained to a Georgia Department of Natural Resources employee about the crossing in question four months ago, alleging that it bounced too much when several school-age children were running on it. or just himself.
Department and county officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Plaintiffs from that community are suing the county over regulations adopted a year ago, saying they will make it harder for Gullah Geechee residents to remain on the island while opening the doors to a three-story waterfront development in Hog Hammock.
Earlier this year, the lawsuit was dismissed.
A referendum to repeal the county’s new Sapelo Island development regulations was scheduled for a countywide hearing this fall, but a judge blocked it, and now the plaintiffs have asked the state Supreme Court to intervene.
“I’ve been doing this job for 15 years,” Grovner said in two interviews Sunday.
He said he would like to see a federal investigation into what caused the collapse of the relatively new structure, part of improvements on the island accelerated by an earlier lawsuit led by the Gullah Geechee over alleged government negligence that was settled.
Meanwhile, Grovner said the survivors of those who died Saturday will be embraced by the Gullah Geechee and their decades-long struggle for survival.
“Family members who lost loved ones have now become members of our family,” he said.
Jesse Kirsch and Maria Piñero reported from Darien, Georgia. Dennis Romero reported from San Diego.