Victims identified after fatal dock collapse in Georgia that killed seven

Georgia authorities have named the seven people killed Saturday afternoon after a gangway they were on collapsed in the waters off the state’s Atlantic coast on Sapelo Island.

Crowds had gathered for a fall celebration by the island’s small Gullah-Geechee community of descendants of black slaves and were waiting for a ferry to return to the mainland when the tragedy occurred.

Among the dead was 77-year-old Charles Houston Jr. of Darien, chaplain for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources — the same agency investigating what caused the gangway’s “catastrophic failure.”

The other victims were named Carlotta McIntosh, 93, Isaiah Thomas, 79, Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75, Cynthia Gibbs, 74, all of Jacksonville, Florida and William Johnson Jr., 73, and Queen Welch, 76, both of Atlanta.

Three other people are in critical condition in hospital after the gangplank collapsed.

‘It is a structural failure. “There would be very, very little maintenance required on such an aluminum gangway, but we’ll see what the research yields,” GDNR Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference Sunday.

The gangway, which was installed in 2021, gave way as an estimated 700 people visited the largely pristine island of Sapelo, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of Savannah and 7 miles (11 kilometers) offshore. There is no bridge connecting the island to the mainland.

People traveled there Saturday for the annual fall Cultural Day event, spotlighting Hogg Hummock, home to several dozen black residents.

The community of dirt roads and modest homes was founded after the Civil War by former slaves from Thomas Spalding’s cotton plantation.

Rabon said there were “more than 40 people” on the gangway when at least 20 fell into the water.

The gangway, installed in 2021, connected an outside dock where people board the ferry to another dock on land.

Rabon said his agency had extra staff on Saturday due to the crowds, a total of 40 people.

After the collapse, the U.S. Coast Guard and local sheriffs and fire departments rushed to the island to help, using boats and helicopters.

Ed Grovner worked as a senior mate on one of the ferries that transported people between the island and the mainland.

He described how the ferry hit the dock shortly after the collapse and crew members saw orange life jackets floating in the water that had been thrown in to help fallen people.

Grovner said he and other crew members tried to help a man and a woman while someone administered CPR, but they were already dead.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Grovner said. ‘My wife said I was sleeping, I screamed in my sleep and said, “I’m going to save you. I’m going to save you. I’m going to get you.”

He sighed deeply and said, “I wish I could have done more.”

Small coastal communities are descended from enslaved island populations in the south – known as Gullah or Geechee in Georgia – are distributed from North Carolina to Florida, including on Sapelo Island.

Scholars say their separation from the mainland allowed residents to retain much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills like basket weaving.

Hogg Hummock resident Jazz Watts was at the festival site, where visitors gathered for quilt-making and fishing net-making demonstrations while sampling island foods such as smoked mullet and gumbo, when news of the collapse spread.

Watts said that when he arrived, he saw first responders and civilians pulling people out of the water and trying to administer CPR and other aid. Some of the dead were covered with blankets.

“It’s devastating,” Watts said. “When you see people being carried who are wrapped in blankets and have died; it is traumatizing for everyone.”

Resident Reginald Hall was among those who rushed into the water, where an outgoing tide created a strong current that pulled victims toward the ocean.

Hall said he got a two-year-old child and led her past a chain of bystanders to the shore, about 200 feet away. He then helped carry bodies wrapped in blankets.

“It was chaotic,” Hall said. ‘It was terrible.’

JR Grovner loaded an injured woman into the back of a pickup truck and drove her to a field where a helicopter evacuated the victims.

The ground was thick with tall grass that camouflaged holes dug by wild boars, he said.

Sapelo Island residents sued McIntosh County and the state of Georgia in federal court in 2015, arguing they lacked basic services, including facilities and resources for medical emergencies.

In a 2022 settlement, county officials agreed to build a helipad on the island, but that still hasn’t happened.

The ferry dock was rebuilt in 2021 after Georgia officials settled the same lawsuit, in which islanders complained that state-operated ferries and docks did not meet federal accessibility standards for people with disabilities.

Grovner said he complained to one of the ferry captains about four months ago that the aisle to the ferry didn’t seem sturdy enough, but nothing happened. Rabon said he was not aware of any complaints.

Watts said a private health care provider planned to open a clinic in a county-owned building long used as a community center on Sapelo Island, but the deal fell through when county commissioners decided to lease the space to use as a restaurant to use.

None of the seven people killed were islanders, Rabon said. And Watts, Hall and JR Grovner said they were not aware of any family members of islanders among the dead.

A team of investigators with expertise in engineering and accident reconstruction – with assistance from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation – was on the scene Sunday to investigate why the walkway failed.

In 1996, Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, was placed on the floor National Register of Historic Placesthe official list of valuable historic sites in the US.

But the community’s population has been shrinking for decades, and some families have sold their land to outsiders who built vacation homes.

Tax increases and local zoning changes have led to protests and lawsuits by Hogg Hummock residents and landowners.

Zoning changes approved in 2023 doubled the size of permitted homes in Hogg Hummock, raising residents’ fears that larger homes would lead to tax increases that could force them to sell land their families have owned for generations .