Seven people were killed and several others injured when a ferry dock gangway collapsed on a Georgia island Saturday afternoon.
Authorities struggled to explain the tragedy, which ruined a planned celebration of Sapelo Island’s Gullah-Geechee community.
“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.
More than 40 people were on the gangway when it collapsed, officials said. At least 20 people went into the water, suffering various injuries.
The gangway had just been installed in 2021. The prior platform failed to meet federal disability standards and Sapelo Island’s small community of residents successfully sued Georgia to get a replacement.
“There was no collision” with a boat or anything else, Georgia DNR spokesman Tyler Jones said. “The thing just collapsed. We don’t know why.”
None of the seven people killed were Sapelo Island residents, according to Rabon. One of the dead was a chaplain with the Department of Natural Resources.
Sapelo Island, about 40 miles south of Savannah, is home to a tiny Gullah-Geechee community in the town of Hogg Hummock. The Gullah-Geechee are direct descendants of enslaved people who were forced to work on plantations along islands on the Atlantic coast.
Saturday marked Cultural Day on Sapelo Island, an annual day to celebrate the community and its traditions.
“Everyone is family and everyone knows each other,” said Roger Lotson, who represents Sapelo Island on the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners. “In any tragedy, especially like this, they are all one. They’re all united. They all feel the same pain and the same hurt.”