PWC Accidents Keeping Local Crews Busy

OCEAN CITY – Local law enforcement agencies remained busy with personal watercraft (PWC) accidents on the waters in and around the resort area this week with another incident on Tuesday involving a collision that resulted in several victims being ejected into the water.

Around 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Ocean City Fire Department units were dispatched to the area of 32nd Street for a reported PWC accident. Arriving units found two of the PWCs had collided in the bay off 32nd Street with one confirmed victim and several other individuals in the water. Ocean City paramedics arrived on scene and boarded a personal watercraft in order to reach the injured person in the water.

The Ocean City Fire Department Fire Boat 1 was also deployed to the area and took the injured victim from the paramedics on the PWC. One male patient was ultimately transported to Atlantic General with unknown injuries, while others were taken from the water uninjured. Maryland Natural Resources Police (NRP) assisted with the rescue operation and an investigating into the collision is ongoing.

Tuesday’s PWC collision continues a recent spate of similar incidents in the waters around the resort area. Last week, two New York men had to be rescued after one suffered a PWC accident and the other, the first victim’s brother-in-law, toppled into the water at the commercial harbor while responding to help. NRP officers responded to an area in the Sinepuxent Bay for a report of an individual with a medical emergency who fell off a personal watercraft and was unconscious in the water.

The Coast Guard assisted NRP officers in getting the unconscious victims to waiting paramedics at the commercial harbor when the victim’s brother-in-law also became stricken and fell from the dock into the water. An off-duty NRP officer dove into the harbor to rescue the second victim.

Two weeks ago, two Pennsylvania women were seriously injured when the PWC they were riding slammed into a duck blind in the Sinepuxent Bay behind Assateague at a high rate of speed and were launched into the water. In that incident, NRP officers quickly located the two female victims and pulled them onto their vessel where they administered first aid. The two victims each suffered leg and head wounds and were taken by the NRP to the boat ramp at Assateague State Park before being transferred to AGH for treatment of non-life threatening injuries.