Dozens of people quickly organized on a beach in Florida to help a group of swimmers, including two children, in danger of drowning in a powerful riptide. They formed a human chain stretching almost 100 yards into the Gulf of Mexico to rescue a group of swimmers.

Six members of the same family, including two young boys and a grandmother who suffered a heart attack (who thankfully recovered), were among nine people passed along the chain to safety at Florida’s Panama City beach on Saturday evening.

“It was a wave of humanity that brings some things back into focus, that maybe we haven’t lost all hope in this world,” Derek Simmons, an Alabama native who quickly organised the chain and swam with his wife Jessica to rescue the stranded group, told the Guardian on Tuesday.

After about an hour in the water, he said, they were exhausted but able to rescue the last of the group.

Simmons said those who had formed the chain were jubilant once they realized everybody was safe. “It was pretty amazing, all these different people, complete strangers who didn’t even know each other’s names, hugging and high-fiving.

“I’ve seen reports saying that Jessica and I were the heroes out there but that’s not true – everybody that was involved, they’re heroes. Had we not had an anchor or a chain we wouldn’t have been able to bring people in the way that we did.

