By Wealthy McKay
(Reuters) – At the least seven folks have been killed after a part of a ship dock collapsed, sending no less than 20 into the Atlantic waters off the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia.
U.S. Coast Guard ships have been looking Saturday evening for lacking folks.
The accident, which additionally induced a number of accidents, occurred throughout a celebration of Sapelo Island’s tiny Gullah-Geechee neighborhood of Black slave descendants, authorities mentioned.
A gangway that was crowded with folks ready for a ferryboat collapsed late Saturday afternoon on the Georgia barrier island about 60 miles (97 km) south of Savannah, mentioned Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for the Georgia Division of Pure Assets, which runs the ferry.
“We and multiple agencies are searching for survivors,” Jones mentioned.
Coast Guard helicopters and boats geared up with sonar instantly started search-and-rescue operations, officers mentioned. The reason for the accident was not instantly clear.
Sapelo Island is barely reachable by boat and the state-run ferry takes about 20 minutes to achieve its shores.
Folks have been marking Cultural Day, an annual pageant celebrating the island’s historic Black neighborhood of descendants of former enslaved folks, certainly one of a number of surviving island communities from Georgia to North Carolina.
The folks referred to as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia, are believed to have retained a lot of their African heritage due to their isolation.
“Our thoughts and prayers go out to all involved, including the entire Sapelo Island Community,” the Georgia DNR mentioned in a press release.