OAK ISLAND, N.C. — Beachgoers cautiously returned to the ocean Monday after two young people lost limbs in separate, life-threatening shark attacks in the same town in North Carolina.
A 12-year-old girl lost her left arm below the elbow and suffered a leg injury Sunday afternoon; then about an hour and 20 minutes later and 2 miles away, a shark bit off the left arm above the elbow of a 16-year-old boy.
Both had been swimming about 20 yards offshore, in waist-deep water.
A shark expert says the best response after one of these extremely rare attacks is to temporarily close beaches that lack lifeguards. Local officials acknowledged Monday that they didn't make a concerted effort to warn people up and down the town's beaches to stop swimming until after the second attack.
Some of the people calling for help sounded nearly hysterial in recordings of 911 calls released Monday. Dispatchers calmly responded by describing how to wrap the wounds in cloth or towels and apply pressure.
"Ma'am I need you to calm down," the dispatcher tells one upset female caller near where the boy was attacked.
"His arm is gone!" the caller exclaims.
Randy Giles, 52, was sitting on the sand with his fiancee, Schalane Wolford, when he heard the girl scream, and called 911 immediately, before she was carried to the beach.
"At first I thought it was a jellyfish sting, but when (the man next to her) pulled her out of the water, she was bleeding and a lot of her arm was bit off, so I knew it was a shark," Giles said.
As people screamed to get out of the water, Giles said Wolford ran over to give the family her towels, and someone else used a cord from a boogie board as a tourniquet for the girl's arm.
After the second attack, town employees drove along beaches urging people to get out, but the instructions were voluntary and not mandatory. Oak Island Town Manager Tim Holloman said officials are still researching whether they can legally force people out.
"We were trying to get people on the beach with megaphones and ATVs to warn people to get out of the water," Holloman said.
Earlier Monday, Mayor Betty Wallace told The Associated Press that information was too spotty after Sunday's first attack to justify immediately clearing the water, but that after the second attack, they did warn swimmers to get out.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene as the attacks disrupted one of the first busy weekends since public schools ended for summer. The victims — a girl from Asheboro and a boy from Colorado Springs, Colorado — were bleeding heavily, and other beachgoers applied makeshift tourniquets.
It was "quite nightmarish," vacationer Steve Bouser told the AP. "I saw someone carry this girl (out of the water), and people were swarming around and trying to help ... It was quite terrible."
The first 911 call about the girl was made at 4:12 p.m., and the first call about the boy's attack came in after 5:30 p.m., sheriff's spokeswoman Emily Flax said.
Just four days earlier, a 13-year-old girl suffered small lacerations on her foot from a shark bite on Ocean Isle Beach, about 15 miles from Oak Island. Both towns are on barrier islands just off the coast.
Surgeons amputated the girl's left arm below her elbow, and she has tissue damage to her lower left leg. The boy's left arm was removed below his left shoulder. Both were in good condition Monday at the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, where Dr. Borden Hooks operated on both victims.
There were only 72 unprovoked shark attacks on humans around the world in 2014, including 52 in the U.S., according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Three of them — all outside the U.S. — were fatal.
Shark researcher George Burgess, who oversees the database, said he's aware of only two other multipleshark attacks on the same beach in one day. "It may be that there are big schools of fish out in the surf zone that are attracting the sharks," he said.
Most beaches in North Carolina lack lifeguards, and without authorities keeping watch, the best advice is to close the beach temporarily, Burgess said.
"It would be my best judgment to shut down the beach for the day," he said.
A surf camp scheduled for this week has been canceled.
"We just thought that was a prudent measure. A lot of inexperienced people out there flailing around is not necessarily a good thing," Holloman said.
Deputies using boats and helicopters to monitor the water after the attacks did see a 7-foot shark between where the incidents happened, Sheriff John Ingram said. Another shark was spotted Monday morning.
But the town's beaches were open, and Watts said "there's no way we're going to stop people from going into the water."
People should avoid swimming where people are fishing, stay out of the water if they have bleeding cuts, and avoid swimming in turbulent water or after a storm, Holloman said.
"Oak Island is still a safe place," Holloman said. "This is highly unusual."
Larry James, of Asheville, N.C., has come to Oak Island for 20 years to vacation. He said he and his wife wouldn't let their six-year-old granddaughter, Maggie, go out far.
"We won't be out in the water so far. Ankle deep at the most," he said
Many others were staying out entirely, said Lori Little, of Claremont, N.C., who was vacationing with her husband.
"I would describe the beach as empty as compared to when we were here yesterday," she said. "I don't think people are quite ready to get in the water yet."
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Associated Press writers Jack Jones in Columbia, S.C., and Jonathan Drew and Martha Waggoner in Raleigh contributed to this report.