The tragedy at the dock is the latest chapter in the long struggle of the Gullah Gichi community

CNN
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For the young daughters of Michael and Kimberly Wood, it was their first time participating in the annual festival celebrating the culture of the Gullah Geechee community on Georgia’s remote Sapelo Island, the birthplace of their maternal grandmother and other descendants of enslaved Africans.

After a day of storytelling, poetry, religious dances and hopeful spirituals a week ago on Saturday, Woods, other family members and dozens of festival-goers waited at the floating dock and adjacent walkway for a scenic ferry ride to the mainland across the swampy Doboy. Sound.

A loud crack and a sudden shift of the gangway were the only warnings before the relatively new one aluminum track submerged in water about 60 miles south of Savannah. The collapse killed seven people and injured several others, and his two girls got, Michael Wood said, a first-hand look at the long-standing heartache and resilience of the Gullah Geechee community.

“It’s a fight for survival,” said Wood, a quality assurance engineer who slid down a collapsed gangway, pulled his 74-year-old mother from the water and handed her to a stranger on the dock.

Wood said he tried unsuccessfully to reach his 8-year-old daughter, Hayley, who was eventually rescued by a relative’s boyfriend as she clung to part of the dock. His wife Kimberly, holding on to their 2-year-old daughter Riley and using a book bag as a flotation device, was swept away by strong currents before another stranger pulled them to safety.

The October 19 tragedy was the latest chapter in the struggle of one of the last surviving Gullah Geechee communities on the Georgia Sea Islands. These descendants of Africans who were enslaved on coastal plantations in the Southeast have fought to preserve their way of life amid what they describe as a long policy of neglect by state and county officials.

“The call from the community to save it is strong and deep, even risking their lives to save lives,” said Joyce White, professor and interim director Gullah Geechee Heritage Center at Georgia Southern University. “The life or death risk in this case is about future survival.”

Four women and three men, all in their 70s, died in the collapse, which the head of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said was caused by a “catastrophic failure of a ramp.” The engineering firm will conduct an independent investigation into the cause, the DNR said on Friday.

The victims were identified as Jacqueline Crews Carter, 75; Cynthia Gibbs, 74; William Johnson, Jr., 73; Carlotta Mackintosh, 93; Isaiah Thomas, 79; Welch Queens, 76; and Charles L. Houston, 77. They came to the festival from Jacksonville, Florida, Atlanta and Darien, Georgia.

The dead were among 700 visitors to the island annual celebration of the Day of Culturewhich, according to residents, gathered up to 2,000 people. Only 29 of the original descendants remain in the small village known as Hogg Hummock or Hog Hammock, where their enslaved ancestors settled after being forcibly brought here in 1802. Now most of the island belongs to the state.

As festival-goers waited to board the ferry back to the mainland, the gangway came down. At least 20 people dove into the Duplin River, officials said. At that moment there were about 40 people on the sidewalk.

The ferry dock was rebuilt in 2021 after a group of Gullah Geechee residents reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the state on what they demanded in 2019 claim skyrocketed property taxes and worse treatment compared to mainlanders. In a 2015 federal civil rights lawsuit, residents said they were paying high property and income taxes inadequate services, including “water, emergency medical services, fire service, road maintenance, garbage and accessible ferry crossings for community members.”

The lawsuit against the state was settled in 2020, and the case against the county two years later. The state settlement included the construction of a dock and “new aluminum gangways” as well as improved ferry services.

“An aluminum gangway like this requires very, very little maintenance,” DNR Commissioner Walter Rabon told reporters last Sunday, adding that there are “almost daily” visual inspections of the structure.

The trap has undergone four safety inspections since 2022, the DNR said in a statement Thursday. According to the statement, a subcontractor inspected the structure in May 2022, a day after the agency “became aware of a loud noise heard by a group of people in the passageway.”

An inspection in May 2022 and a follow-up later that year in December found “no structural problems with the gangway,” the agency that owns and operates the docks and ferries said. Two additional inspections were conducted after the recent hurricanes Helen and Milton and “no concerns” were identified, the statement said.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is also investigating the cause of the collapse. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents relatives of some of the victims, and several island residents called for a federal investigation.

“See where their grandmother grew up”

A week ago Saturday, Michael and Kimberly Wood, their two daughters, his mother, Susie, and several other family members arrived at Sapelo from their homes across the state. The barrier island, about 7 miles off the coast of Georgia, is accessible only by boat or ferry.

“I wanted my daughters to experience Culture Day and see where their grandmother grew up,” said Michael Wood.

However, on the way back from the event, the gangway collapsed, and Wood, 43, said his family saw firsthand the resilience and strength of a threatened community that refuses to go away.

“Many people who attended the festival took action,” he said. “People were falling into the water and screaming everywhere. And others rushed from the festival to save everyone who could.”

Video from the scene shows people desperately clinging to a section of walkway that hangs in the water at a steep angle. Others were swept into the water by the current. Nevertheless, people rushed to help. Some threw life jackets into the water as survivors swam away.

Wood said he learned from his sister on shore that his 8-year-old daughter had been rescued. He ran along the rocky shoreline desperately searching for Kimberly and Riley, calling out their names and fearing the worst. “My heart just dropped,” he said. His sister, a nurse, performed CPR on several people along the way.

Afterwards, the couple, their daughters and other family members reunited and held each other tightly with tears in their eyes.

“The visitors and everyone at the event jumped on board quickly,” said Kimberly Wood, 42, whose voice was still shaking days after the tragedy.

“They actually took over. Life jackets were thrown. We were very far away and I had to wait for a life jacket to come to me. I thank all visitors and descendants for the prompt action. I don’t know their names, maybe their faces, but thank you.’

44-year-old J. Ar. Grovner, who runs a tour company on the island and kept his boat docked, said the first rescue efforts in the first 30 to 45 minutes after the gangway collapsed were mostly locals and festival-goers. According to him, ships and a helicopter of the coast guard and “DNR” appeared later. Others who were there gave similar testimony.

“We had an inferno on Sapelo for almost an hour … and it was being looked after by civilians,” he said.

The DPR said other emergency agencies assisted in deploying side-scanning sonar-equipped boats and helicopters for search and rescue missions. But officials have not released a specific schedule for these efforts.

“This is part of our ongoing investigation. We will provide additional updates as they become available,” DNR Deputy Commissioner Trevor Santos said in an email Friday.

At the press conference after the collapse, DPR Commissioner Rabon thanked the civilians who took the time to help. “Their quick response and actions saved additional lives,” he said.

Grovener said that when he arrived at the dock shortly after the collapse, he noticed that someone had loosened his boat, which had drifted away because they were unable to start its engine. “It was like a horror movie scene,” he said, noting that he briefly tried to revive a man on the shore.

He jumped into the water. Another boatman picked him up and took Grovner to his own vessel, where he said he found a cousin performing CPR on two people who were already dead. They returned to the wharf and left the two bodies on the shore. Grovner said he then heard his godmother screaming at him that her 2-month-old daughter was unconscious after falling into the water.

Grovner took the child in his speedboat. A woman at the scene left her child with one of his relatives and volunteered to perform CPR on the girl while he raced to the mainland. His goddaughter suffered a broken knee in the fall. He left her baby girl in the hands of paramedics on the mainland, he said. She survived.

The other day, Grovner recalled, his granddaughter told him she doubted she would return to Sapelo. “You don’t want to hear someone say that if they’re from the island,” he said.

On the day of the collapse, Grovner eventually returned to the dock, where he and others covered some of the bodies with blankets. They also used blankets to carry the injured to waiting boats to take them to the mainland for emergency treatment, he said.

Reginald Hall, 59, an island native who helped chronicle the claims and organize residents involved in the lawsuits, joined Grovener at a press conference last weekend. They demanded answers from state and district officials.

“On that day, I saw that the human tissues united and were given the opportunity to make all the efforts that they could – we could – to stand not only in the place of people who are suffering, but also to become participants in rescue operations and say, if it were us , we would like to get the same response,” Hall told CNN.

White, a professor at Georgia Southern University, added, “The Gullah Geechee community has always had to fight for its survival. And the attacks on culture do not stop.”

CNN Dalia Faheid, Ashley R. Williams, Michelle Watson, Melissa Alonso, Sharif Paget, Sarah Dewberry, Zoe Sottile, Philip Wang, Chandelise Duster, Adeline Chen, Theo Kermeliotis, Emma Tucker, Nicole Chavez, Devon Sayers, Kia Fatahi, Nick Valencia and Zenebu Sylla contributed to this report.