PANAMA CITY, Fl. – A St. Louis woman drowned in the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida’s panhandle on Sunday morning.
The Bay County Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a distressed swimmer on Sunday around 11:30 a.m. at Carillon Beach, just north of Panama City Beach. Debbie Szymanski, 60, was pronounced dead after being transported to a local hospital.
Szymanski was the sixth person to die in four days due to dangerous rip currents.
Witnesses say she was unresponsive when she was pulled from the water.
According to the Associated Press, rip currents are narrow columns of water flowing rapidly away from the beach, like a swift stream within the ocean. They don’t pull swimmers under water but can carry them out a fair distance from shore.
Low spots along the beach, or areas near jetties or piers, are often where rip currents form. They can be connected to stormy weather but also sometimes occur during sunny days. They can be hard to detect because the surface water often appears calm.
The current can flow as swiftly as eight feet per second (3.2 meters per second), faster than even a strong swimmer can overcome, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Double-red flags indicating that the water is closed to the public due to dangerous conditions were flying the afternoon Szymanski died.