DARIEN, Ga. — The seven people killed Saturday in a gangway collapse on a Georgia barrier island were all in their 70s, except for one woman in her 90s, the coroner said Sunday.
An estimated 700 people were on Sapelo Island, about 72 miles south of Savannah, to celebrate the Gullah Geechee history and its unique blend of African culture and American life when the collapse took place.
McIntosh County Coroner Melvin Anderson identified the deceased to 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 in the water when the gangway leading to the island’s Marsh Ferry Dock gave way shortly before 4 p.m. as a ferry was docked, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference Sunday.
The crowds at Saturday’s celebration were enough that officials requested extra ferry trips to take visitors back to the mainland, Rabon said.
A number of bystanders, including some of the 40 state employees on hand to deal with the extra crowds, jumped in the water as part of many attempts to save those who needed help, he said.
Houston, one of the people who died, was a Department of Natural Resources chaplain who had been on hand for the celebration because he believed in “preservation of the Gullah Geechee heritage and preservation of threatened communities,” daughter Heather Houston-Meeks told NBC News.
Houston-Meeks and her father were among a stream of people expecting to embark the ferry shortly, when she ended up in the water in a flash before making it safety to shore, she said.
Some of her father’s coworkers told her he sprung into action, she said.
“I’m told that what he was doing when we went in the water was immediately kick it into action and look out for other people and rescue other people,” Houston-Meeks said. “He was until the last second serving others and looking out for others.”
‘Catastrophic failure’
Rabon blamed “catastrophic failure” of the gangway and said an investigation that may determine what caused the failure was underway.
Asked if overcrowding on the gangway, which took visitors to the ferry Annemarie, may have precipitated the collapse, Rabon said, “At this time I wouldn’t rule out anything as being a possibility.”
The structure was rebuilt in 2021 and hardly needed inspections, though it underwent them regularly, Rabon said. On Sunday, images from the scene showed the collapsed gangway attached to the dock at one end and submerged at the other.
Cellphone video showed a chaotic scene in the milky waters off the island’s west side as civilians in street and Sunday clothing waded toward victims and tried to pull them to shore, where others administered CPR.
Of the half-dozen others who survived but required medical attention, three remained hospitalized in critical condition on Sunday, officials said at the news conference.
The U.S. Coast Guard sent two air crews to assist with a search of survivors into the night Saturday, a spokesperson said. The nearby Camden County Sheriff’s Office sent divers who searched the murky shadows of the gangway’s structure and railing, partially submerged, according to social media posts from the office.
It wasn’t clear at the time if there were people missing in the water, but on Sunday authorities said it appears everyone involved was accounted for.
Sapelo Island ferry service will resume Monday using an auxiliary dock, Department of Natural Resources spokesperson Tyler Jones said Sunday.
Fight over island’s future
Sapelo is divided from the rest of Georgia by the Duplin River and coastal sounds created by fingers of the Atlantic.
The Department of Natural Resources controls and operates almost all the land on the island, which came into the state’s hands after a set of transactions with its owner, Annmarie Reynolds of the Reynolds tobacco-producing family, roughly a half-century ago.
There remains a Black enclave, Hog Hammock, created by her late husband R.J. Reynolds to consolidate the island’s residents, that survives as a rare outpost of the Gullah Geechee people, who were the center of Saturday’s festivities.
Their culture has employed parts of indigenous African traditions continuously since its first adherents were forcibly removed from Africa and brought to the Southeastern United States against their will and enslaved on plantations.
It’s not clear if any of those who died in Saturday’s collapse were Gullah Geechee people.
The deaths came as residents of Hog Hammock, also spelled Hogg Hummock, have been battling the McIntosh County government over what they say have been attempts to squeeze them off the land with taxes and rules that would allow luxury accommodations.
Despite the community’s existence on the National Register of Historic Places, some residents, like J.R. Grovner, believe the county and state are upending the Gullah Geechee people there through new regulations and neglect.
Grovner, who splits his time between Hog Hammock and the mainland, said he had complained to a Georgia Department of Natural Resources employee four months ago about the gangway in question, saying it bounced too much with a few school children running across it or just him alone.
The department and county government did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Monday.
Plaintiffs in the community sued the county over regulations passed a year ago that they argued would make it difficult for Gullah Geechee people to remain on the island while simultaneously opening the door to three-story coastal development in Hog Hammock.
The suit was dismissed earlier this year.
A referendum seeking to overturn the county’s new regulations on Sapelo Island development was scheduled for a countywide vote this fall, but a judge blocked it, and now plaintiffs have petitioned the state Supreme Court for intervention.
“I’ve been doing this work for 15 years,” Grovner said in a pair of interviews Sunday.
He said he’d like to see a federal investigation into what led to the collapse of a relatively new structure, part of improvements on the island hastened by a previous Gullah Geechee-led lawsuit over alleged government neglect that was settled.
Meanwhile, Grovner said, survivors of those who died Saturday will be embraced by the Gullah Geechee and their longstanding fight to exist.
“The family members who lost their loved ones have now become our family members,” he said.
Jesse Kirsch and Maria Piñero reported from Darien, Georgia. Dennis Romero reported from San Diego.