A day devoted to celebrating the Gullah Geechee culture on Sapelo Island quickly became an emergency situation when the gangway connecting the stationary dock to the floating dock and the Anne Marie Ferry came crashing down.
When Erika Blocker-LeCounte saw the Sapelo Island gangway collapse, sending 20 people into the Duplin River, she didn’t dive into the water or gather around the slippery metal to pull people in. A fisherman’s daughter and a lifelong coastal resident, Blocker-LeCounte knew the tides and used that local knowledge to make a split-second decision. She ran away from the river, jumped off a pier into the marsh and sprinted across the beach to get ahead of people being carried away by the current. Others followed to help. Blocker-LeCounte then waded in over waist deep—careful to avoid drop-offs—and began pulling people out of the water.
Just before the collapse, Blocker-LeCounte was talking with a woman on the gangway who is a Coastal Electric Cooperative member and a distant relative of her husband’s. As Blocker-LeCounte ran down the beach, she could hear the woman calling her name. Blocker-LeCounte was able to pull her from the water and onto the beach to safety. She also saved the life of another woman and assisted with helping others out of the water after they had gone in.
In recognition of her heroic actions, Blocker-LeCounte, an employee of Coastal Electric Cooperative, received a Lifesaving Award from Georgia EMC* during the state association’s Annual Meeting on Nov. 11, 2024, in Savannah.
“One thing I would like everyone to know is that you can do something,” Blocker-LeCounte says.
And because she did, at least two lives were saved that day.
Blocker-LeCounte notes that many people from coastal Georgia do not know how to swim. Just two years before this tragic accident, she took swimming lessons for the first time in her life. Following her heroic actions, Blocker-LeCounte is even more convinced that encouraging others to learn to swim is part of her life’s mission.
Blocker-LeCounte is one of 12 employees from seven electric cooperatives in Georgia to be recognized with a 2024 Lifesaving Award, which honors co-op employees whose quick thinking and actions are instrumental in safeguarding others from dangerous or potentially deadly situations.
*Georgia EMC is the statewide trade association representing the state’s 41 electric cooperatives, Oglethorpe Power, Georgia Transmission Corp. and Georgia System Operations Corp.