Sometimes it takes a human chain! This story made me feel proud of my country!

[marylander1940]

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 Saturday evening, 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. People on the beach had no rescue equipment, only boogie boards, surf boards and their arms and legs.

 

“Form a human chain!” they started shouting.

 

By then, Ursrey and the other eight 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. The couple had just gone into the water when they saw the boys far from shore. 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.

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-riptide-swept-away-a-florida-family-then-beachgoers-formed-a-human-chain/ar-BBEdU0P?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

 

 

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This report makes me feel good about people in general. Day in and day out it seems only the bad and the ugly make it into media coverage.

[marylander1940]

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I found the pic!

[marylander1940]

Family says 'thank you' to the 'angels' who formed human chain to rescue them off Florida coast

 

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/family-says-thank-angels-formed-human-chain-rescue-133705927--abc-news-topstories.html