SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Georgia authorities said Sunday they are investigating the "catastrophic failure" of a dock gangway that collapsed and killed seven people on an island off the state's Atlantic seacoast, where crowds gathered for a fall celebration by the island's tiny Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.
"It is a structural failure. There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that, but we'll see what the investigation unfolds," Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference, a day after the tragedy on Sapelo Island.
He said three people remained hospitalized in critical condition from Saturday's collapse.
The gangway, installed in 2021, gave way as an estimated 700 people visited largely unspoiled Sapelo Island, about 60 miles south of Savannah, for its annual fall Cultural Day event spotlighting Hogg Hummock, home to a few dozen Black residents. The community of dirt roads and modest homes was founded after the Civil War by former slaves from the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.
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Rabon said "upwards of 40 people" were on the gangway when at least 20 fell into the water. Installed in 2021, the gangway connected an outer dock where people board the ferry to another dock onshore.
Rabon said his agency had extra staff working, 40 people total, on Saturday because of crowds. After the collapse, the U.S. Coast Guard and local sheriff's and fire departments rushed to the island to help, using boats and helicopters. No roads link Sapelo Island to the mainland.
Ed Grovner was working as senior mate on one of the ferries taking people between the island and the mainland. He told The Associated Press the ferry pulled up to the dock a short time after the collapse and crew members saw orange lifejackets bobbing in the water that had been tossed in to help those who had fallen. Grovner said he and other crew members tried to help a man and a woman, with someone administering CPR, but they were already dead.
"I couldn't sleep last night," Grovner said. "My wife said I was sleeping, I was hollering in my sleep, saying, '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've did more."
Small coastal communities descended from enslaved island populations in the South -- known as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia -- are scattered from North Carolina to Florida, including on Sapelo Island. Scholars say their separation from the mainland caused residents to retain much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills such as basket weaving.
Hogg Hummock resident Jazz Watts was at the festival site when word spread of the collapse.
Watts said when he arrived, he saw emergency responders and civilians pulling people from 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 that are wrapped in blankets and they have died, it's traumatizing to everyone."
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