Video shows chaotic moments after deadly dock walkway collapse in Georgia

Eyewitness video captured the frenzied moments aft a Georgia ferry dock walkway collapsed Saturday, sidesplitting 7 people.

The video, published Monday by The Associated Press, shows radical clinging to the breached walkway to support themselves retired of the water.

Seven radical were killed and respective others hospitalized aft the dock illness connected Sapelo Island, a sparsely populated Georgia obstruction land astir 40 miles southbound of Savannah.

More than 40 radical were connected the walkway erstwhile it collapsed successful the center, leaving radical clinging to flanks that were inactive attached to antithetic docks.

The video, captured by Icy White of Atlanta, shows radical connected adust crushed tossing beingness jackets to others floating distant successful unfastened water.

The Sapelo Island visitors-turned-rescuers jumped into the h2o to scope immoderate people, portion others passed children backmost successful a chain, witnesses said.

“There was nary EMS that was there,” White’s relative Darrel Jenkins told The Associated Press. “We were the EMS.”

The U.S. Coast Guard and section exigency responders yet joined the effort, but their accomplishment was delayed due to the fact that of Sapelo Island’s isolation. The lightly populated onshore is separated from the mainland and lone reachable by ferries, which are operated by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Sapelo Island is home to a tiny Gullah-Geechee community, nonstop descendants of enslaved radical who were forced to labour connected an land plantation.

Many radical were visiting Sapelo Island connected Saturday for Cultural Day, a solemnisation of the island’s traditions and culture. The victims were identified arsenic Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75; Cynthia Gibbs, 74; Carlotta McIntosh, 93; and Isaiah Thomas, 79, of Jacksonville, on with William Johnson Jr., 73, and Queen Welch, 76, of Atlanta and Charles L. Houston, 77, of Darien, Ga.

Festival goers who attended a Gullah Geechee festival connected Sapelo Island permission the Elm Grove Church wherever they were taken to reunite with loved ones connected Sapelo Island, Ga successful McIntosh county, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis M. Levine)

The dock walkway that collapsed was built successful 2021, aft a lawsuit forced Georgia to marque the country much accessible for disabled people. Authorities were befuddled aft the collapse.

“It is simply a structural failure,” Georgia DNR Commissioner Walter Rabon said. “There should beryllium very, precise small attraction to an aluminum gangway similar that but we’ll spot what the probe unfolds.”

With News Wire Services