Nine swimmers caught in a rip off a beach in Florida are lucky to be alive after eighty strangers formed a giant human chain in an effort to pull them back to the shore.
Two young children were first pulled into the sea while swimming at Panama City Beach on Saturday, and the four other members of their family who swam out to help were also unable to make their way back.
After seeing the group in distress, other swimmers made their way out to help, only to find themselves caught in the exact same rip. A full 90 metres from the shore, they waved and cried out for help.
No lifeguard was on duty, and law enforcement authorities deemed it too dangerous to head out without a boat. So, other beachgoers did what needed to be done: they linked hands, and stretched their way towards the group.
Married couple Jessica and Derek Simmons managed to swim ahead of the chain, and worked to pass every single stranded swimmer down the line on borrowed surfboards and boogieboards.
That includes Barbara Franz, the 67-year-old grandmother of the two kids. In a Facebook post, Jessica Simmons wrote Franz “looked right at Derek and told him, “Let me go, just let me die and save your self (sic)”.
“My heart sank. I was not going to let this lady die…“He kept shaking her to make sure she was still breathing. She was so out of it, her eyes were rolling into the back of her head.”
Franz was eventually taken back to the shore on a surfboard, where she was attended to by EMTs. It was later found she suffered a huge heart attack in the water, and likely would have perished were it not for the Simmons and the strangers who literally banded together to save her life.
She’s not in a stable condition. Everyone else caught out there is also recovering,
“What really got me was how a entire BEACH jumped into action to save these people,” Simmons wrote.
“People who COULDNT (sic) even swim was part of that human chain. They wanted to help that bad…“Man it was life changing to witness it.”
Hell yeah, guys. Nice one.
Dozens of strangers form human chain to rescue swimmers at Florida beach https://t.co/3XXXi7pvYf pic.twitter.com/yc2jQKoXAU
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) July 12, 2017
Source: Sydney Morning Herald / The Washington Post.
Photo: Jessica Mae Simmons / Facebook.
