Multiple people are still missing after a dock gangway collapsed on Georgia’s Sapelo Island Saturday, killing at least seven and leaving six critically injured, authorities said.
The Camden County Sheriff’s Office released new images of divers searching for survivors in the murky waters around the ruins of a gangway that connected the island to a ferry boat.
“Several individuals are still reported missing,” the office wrote on social media. “We worked alongside numerous agencies … in the search and recovery efforts.”
One of the people killed in the disaster is Charles Houston, a beloved pastor and the chaplain for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, his wife confirmed to The Post.
At least 20 people plunged into the water when the aluminum structure suddenly buckled and collapsed during an event honoring black slave descendants, authorities said.
Witnesses saw an elderly woman with a walker fall and at least four bodies floating away, face-down, in the low-tide current.
Eight people were hospitalized, and six were in critical condition, said Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Authorities are still determining why the structure, which was built in 2021, failed.
“There was no collision” with a boat or anything else, Jones said. “The thing just collapsed. We don’t know why.”
The deadly collapse happened as island residents, family members and tourists gathered for Cultural Day, an annual fall event spotlighting the island’s tiny community of 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.
Hogg Hummock’s slave descendants are extremely close, having been “bonded by family, bonded by history and bonded by struggle,” said Roger Lotson, the only Black member of the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners. His district includes Sapelo Island.
“Everyone is family, and everyone knows each other,” Lotson said. “In any tragedy, especially like this, they are all one. They’re all united. They all feel the same pain and the same hurt.”
With Post wires