THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 26, 1995 TAG: 9507260375
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HATTERAS LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Rough seas and strong rip currents in Hatteras Inlet killed an Outer Banks visitor last week and kept civilian crews running to the rescue.
George Wensel, 37, vacationing from New Kensington, Pa., drowned July 18 while trying to save his 10- and 12-year-old sons from a rip current that was sweeping the boys out to sea.
Wensel and a friend, Claude McAllister, 51, dove into the Atlantic about 7:50 p.m. as they saw Wensel's sons and two other boys struggling against the strong waves on boogie boards. McAllister almost drowned, too. But relatives pulled him back onto the beach.
``When they got McAllister to shore, they couldn't see Wensel anymore,'' National Park Service Ranger B.J. Ratlief said Tuesday from her Buxton office. ``When they caught sight of him again, he was floating face down in the surf. Hatteras Island rescue squad members pulled him onto the beach and did CPR. But by the time the medical examiner arrived, he was already dead.
``There were fairly rough conditions in the ocean that day,'' Ratlief said. ``People should wear personal flotation devices around here - and should never swim alone.''
The drowning was one of four water-related accidents at Hatteras Inlet last week - and the only one that ended in tragedy.
Three other rescues in that area turned ordinary citizens into heroes.
On Friday, an off-duty U.S. Coast Guardsman, his wife and her brother took a 14-foot Coast Guard recreational boat and were fishing for flounder in Hatteras Inlet shortly after 11 a.m. when the aluminum john boat began filling with water - possibly caused by waves from another boat's wake. Anglers on the beach began calling for help.
``All three of them jumped overboard, into the inlet, when the boat began to capsize. The lady grabbed a life jacket and put it on backwards. The other two people in the boat didn't have life jackets,'' said Mike Metzgar, vacationing from Roaring Springs, Pa. He was fishing at the inlet that day and witnessed the incident.
``They all began swimming away from the boat. It was getting swept out to sea. Everyone on the beach began screaming at them to stay with the boat,'' said Metzgar.
A family fishing in a boat nearby headed toward the trio in the water. They tried to get the people aboard, Metzgar said, but were unsuccessful. So the family threw a rope to the three and towed them to shore.
``Some time after that, the charter boat Nancy K caught that john boat and brought it in, too,'' said Jack Coke, an Altoona, Pa., resident who was fishing at the inlet with his wife that day. ``The Coast Guard sent out a rubber boat at least 20 minutes after the incident was over. I don't know why anyone would be out there messing around in the inlet in that little vessel anyway.
``The people on the beach were what saved those folks.''
Metzgar agreed, saying a nearby couple even alerted the Coast Guard to the accident by using their truck's cellular phone.
``I'm not faulting the Coast Guard. They got there as quickly as they could. But the people on the beach were the real heroes that day,'' Metzgar said. ``There were a lot of good Samaritans on the beach last week.''
Other incidents Metzgar and Coke witnessed included a man who was swimming in the inlet but got swept out to the ocean in a rip tide. ``A guy on the beach grabbed someone's rubber raft and swam out to get him,'' Coke said. ``That swimmer was in big trouble. We thought we lost him. If it weren't for that guy just fishing, watching there from the beach, that other man would've drowned.''
A woman on a boogie board also was carried out to sea on a current at the inlet last week as her husband and other anglers fished from the beach. When they realized what was happening, Metzgar said, everyone began shouting for help. The crew of a nearby fishing boat rescued the woman and carried her safely to shore.
``We were out there five days last week, and every day something scary went on,'' said Coke, who has been vacationing on the Outer Banks for more than 30 years. ``That ocean at Hatteras is nothing to mess with. People've got to respect the current and the tide.'' by CNB