DNR Commissioner Walter Rabon (left) speaks at a press conference Sunday one day after gangway collapse on Sapelo Island killed seven people. Screenshot from DNR livestream
The Sapelo Island gangway collapse that killed seven people over the weekend may have been due to buckled metal, the head of the state agency that operates the ferry dock said Tuesday.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Department of Natural Resources have taken custody of the 80-foot ramp and removed it to a warehouse, DNR Commissioner Walter Rabon said.
“From standing there when they removed the gangplank [from the water] on Sunday afternoon, it does look like that it buckled somewhere in the mid-section of the gangplank that resulted with it going into the water,” Rabon said, adding that the investigation is still ongoing.
Speaking to reporters after a regular monthly board meeting in Atlanta, Rabon said the ramp should have been able to support the number of people who were boarding the ferry Saturday after a festive day celebrating the traditional Gullah Geechee community on the barrier island.
“I’m told it could, it should, have been able to support a much larger number than was on the gangway at the time,” Rabon said, but he did not know what any official weight limit might have been.
Rabon said there’s no definite end date for the investigation to determine what happened; it could go on for weeks.
The comments come amid growing criticism and anger of the state agency that runs the ferry service between Sapelo and mainland McIntosh County. Sapelo’s Hogg Hummock area is inhabited by descendants of enslaved West Africans and is the last Gullah Geechee community on a Georgia barrier island.
The DNR has similar ramps, including on the Meridian side of the ferry crossing, but there’s probably only one DNR ramp in the state that’s as long as the one that failed. One daily ferry user, J.R. Grovner, told Rabon at a news conference Sunday he personally had complained to a DNR employee about the ramp being unsafe as many as four months ago.
Rabon told The Current on Tuesday he had not heard any public worries or complaints about the gangplank prior to the collapse.
After Hurricane Helene, DNR staff conducted a visual inspection of the ramp to check for any kind of apparent failures, Rabon said. That review found no faults, he said.
In the prayer that opened the board meeting, the prayer leader asked for blessings for those mourning the seven victims and for the two survivors still recuperating in the hospital as of Tuesday.
This article first appeared on The Current and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. The Current is an independent, in-depth and investigative journalism website for Coastal Georgia.