As the beach strand and waters from Mason Inlet to Masonboro Island were inundated by nearly 25,000 July Fourth revelers, a unified command center of law enforcement agencies worked to keep celebrations safe by writing alcohol citations, responding to medical emergencies and collecting piles of trash.
While law enforcement and lifeguards responded to incidents throughout the day, Wrightsville Beach Police Chief Dan House said overall it was a fairly typical July Fourth.
“Obviously, we had more people . . . so that means more citations,” House said during a Saturday afternoon phone call, “but I think at the end it’s going to be pretty comparable to what we did last year.”
For the first time, 10 deputies were assigned to monitor Mason Inlet after law enforcement noticed more boaters anchoring there last year and an increase in incidents, including boat collisions and a case of alcohol poisoning requiring hospitalization.
This year, House said numbers in Mason Inlet, which separates Wrightsville Beach from Figure Eight Island, were back down to around 1,500 people. Deputies responded to one fight and wrote 15 state citations. Nearby Masonboro Island, which saw a slight decrease in crowds in 2014 as boaters migrated north to Mason Inlet, once again bore the brunt of July Fourth festivities with nearly 4,000 people.
Nonprofit Masonboro.org was ready for the onslaught, staffing the beach with 75 to 80 volunteers carrying trash bags. They collected four full-size Waste Management dumpsters of trash, said Tom Hackler, who organized the cleanup effort.
Law enforcement was also prepared, assigning 30 deputies to patrol the area. New Hanover County deputies wrote 40 state citations, gave four verbal warnings and made three arrests. One serious injury was also reported.
“We had one girl with a pretty bad laceration on her leg, and she had to be transported,” House said, adding she may require surgery. He said the patient might have sustained the injury from a submerged piece of metal.
“You just never know what’s under the water,” he said. “She just stepped on it, or got caught up on it somehow and it tore her up pretty good.”
Several other laceration injuries were also reported in the Masonboro area, although they were less serious and likely caused by oyster shells, House said.
House said besides alcohol violations, deputies were on the lookout for boaters ferrying people to Masonboro Island. The town has the power to levy a $100 fine and the Coast Guard a $27,500 fine to any boater without a captain’s license or proper credentials caught charging passengers for a ride, House said.
Law enforcement apprehended just one unauthorized water taxi July Fourth, he said. But as evening fell, Hackler said he and other Masonboro.org volunteers observed as many as 80 people stranded on the island with no ride home.
“I’m fairly certain there were . . . illegal boat captains bringing them over,” he said. “That’s really kind of hard to regulate.”
Most of those stranded ultimately rode back to the mainland in licensed water taxis, Hackler said, but a number of people also tried to swim back, causing Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue to make multiple evening rescues.
“People were trying to swim and float and raft and kayak across,” WBOR Capt. Jeremy Owens said. “They didn’t understand that an outgoing tide pulling that hard, they wouldn’t make it across, they would get sucked out of the inlet.”
Aside from pulling people out of Masonboro Inlet, the town’s lifeguards made relatively few water rescues, Owens added, despite rough ocean conditions. They did respond to five major incidents in which Emergency Medical Services was dispatched. Those issues ranged from allergic reactions to heat exhaustion.
Deputies patrolling Wrightsville’s beach strand wrote 40 civil citations. Wrightsville Beach Park Ranger Shannon Slocum said most of the illegal activities were related to alcohol consumption and glass bottles on the beach.
Despite hosting the massive Independence Day celebration, the local beaches and waterways survived the holiday relatively unscathed. Slocum said Wrightsville’s beach strand appeared clean when he patrolled the morning of July 5. Masonboro Island stewardship coordinator Hope Sutton said she visited the uninhabited island July 6 and a few bottle caps in the sand were all that remained of the weekend’s festivities.
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