Police have launched new pictures of divers looking for survivors within the murky waters across the ruins of a dock gangway that collapsed on Saturday, killing seven and leaving six critically injured, authorities mentioned.
The sheriff’s workplace of close by Camden County – which despatched divers to assist with the rescue effort – posted photographs to social media on Sunday.
By Sunday afternoon, the Georgia Division of Pure Assets (DNR) confirmed that every one victims have been accounted for.
The useless embody Charles Houston, a beloved pastor and the chaplain for the Georgia DNR, his spouse confirmed to The Submit.
At the very least 20 individuals plunged into the water when the aluminum construction immediately buckled and collapsed throughout an occasion honoring black slave descendants, authorities mentioned.
Witnesses noticed an aged lady with a walker fall and not less than 4 our bodies floating away, face-down, within the low-tide present.
Eight individuals have been hospitalized, and 6 have been in vital situation, mentioned Georgia DNR spokesperson Tyler Jones.
Engineers are nonetheless investigating why the construction, which was inbuilt 2021, failed, and it’s “means too early” to find out the reason for the collapse, Jones instructed the New York Submit.
“There was no collision” with a ship or the rest, Jones had beforehand mentioned. “The factor simply collapsed. We don’t know why.”
The lethal collapse occurred as island residents, relations and vacationers gathered for Cultural Day, an annual fall occasion spotlighting the island’s tiny neighborhood of Hogg Hummock, dwelling to some dozen black residents.
The neighborhood of filth roads and modest houses was based after the Civil Warfare by former slaves from the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.
Hogg Hummock’s slave descendants are extraordinarily shut, having been “bonded by household, bonded by historical past and bonded by battle,” mentioned Roger Lotson, the one Black member of the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners. His district contains Sapelo Island.
“Everyone seems to be household, and everybody is aware of one another,” Lotson mentioned. “In any tragedy, particularly like this, they’re all one. They’re all united. All of them really feel the identical ache and the identical damage.”
—With Submit wires
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