Human chain saves Florida swimmers
Dozens rescue 10 people, including a family, after riptide swept them out
When Jessica and Derek Simmons first saw the beachgoers pausing to stare toward the water, the young couple just assumed someone had spotted a shark.
It was the evening of July 8, after all, peak summer season in Panama City Beach for overheated Florida tourists to cross paths with curious marine life. Then they noticed flashing lights by the boardwalk, a police truck on the sand and nearly a dozen bobbing heads about 100 yards beyond the beach, crying desperately for help.
Six members of a single family — four adults and two young boys — and four other swimmers had been swept away by a powerful and deceptive riptide churning below the water’s surface.
“These people are not drowning today,” Jessica Simmons thought, she told the Panama City News Herald. “It’s not happening. We’re going to get them out.”
She was a strong swimmer and fearless in the face of adversity. But others had tried to reach them and each previous rescue attempt had only stranded more people.
There was no lifeguard on duty and law enforcement on the scene had opted to wait for a rescue boat.
“Form a human chain!” they started shouting.
Roberta Ursrey was among those caught in the treacherous riptide. From 100 metres away in the Gulf of Mexico, between crashing waves and gulps of salt water, she heard the shouting, she told the Washington Post.
By then, Ursrey and the other people stranded with her had already been in the water for nearly 20 minutes, fighting for their lives. Ursrey and the others had ventured into the water to rescue her two sons, Noah, 11, and Stephen, 8, who had gotten separated from their family while chasing waves on their boogie boards.
Tabatha Monroe and her wife Brittany, in Panama City for a birthday getaway, were the first two to hear the boys’ panicked cries for help. They swam over and grabbed hold of their boogie boards.
But when they tried towing them back to shore, the women couldn’t break free of the current.
Soon Ursrey, who had heard her boys cries from the beach, was also caught in the riptide, followed in close succession by her 27-year-old nephew, 67-year-old mother and 31year-old husband. Another unidentified couple struggled to tread water nearby.
On shore, the human chain began forming, first with just five volunteers, then 15, then dozens more as the rescue mission grew more desperate.
Jessica and Derek Simmons swam past the 80 or so human links, some who couldn’t swim, and headed straight for the Ursreys.
Nearly an hour after they first started struggling, just as the sun prepared to set, all 10 of the stranded swimmers were safely back on shore.