There are harrowing stories of people being swept out to sea

[Maybo]

There are harrowing stories of people being swept out to sea, while others clung onto rooftops to survive.

Source: Libya floods: Flooded city of Derna buries its dead in mass graves by BBC

Should I understand the above sentence's structure this way?:

1. There are harrowing stories of people while these people was being swept out to sea, while others clung onto rooftops to survive.

Or

2. There are harrowing stories of people who was being swept out to sea, while others clung onto rooftops to survive.

 

[Tarheel]

There are harrowing stories of people who were swept out to see while others clung onto rooftops to survive.

 

[Maybo]

There are harrowing stories of people who were swept out to see while others clung onto rooftops to survive.

If we drop “who were”, why isn’t it “
There are harrowing stories of people swept out to sea, while others clung onto rooftops to survive”?

 

[jutfrank]

There are harrowing stories of people being swept out to sea

The 'being' focuses on what happened to the people rather than on the people themselves.

 

[Maybo]

The 'being' focuses on what happened to the people rather than on the people themselves.

Do we have another way of writing it?

 

[Rover_KE]

There are probably lots of other ways, but I can't think of a better way than the original..

 

[Maybo]

There are probably lots of other ways, but I can't think of a better way than the original..

When we learn a new sentence structure, we do this:

My teacher gives a sentence:

1. The Johnson building, which is located in Mongkok, has become a tourist spot.

Then, my teacher asks us to simplify the sentence by removing “which is”

2. The Johnson building, located in Mongkok, has become a tourist spot.

Therefore, when we see sentence pattern#2 such as “…, located…, ….”, we know that it comes from sentence #1 (“which is” is dropped)

I’m wondering if the “being” pattern comes from a sentence in which something is dropped.

 

[jutfrank]

Nothing is dropped.

1) People were swept out to sea.

This is a sentence, which describes something that happened. As a sentence, it uses a finite verb (were).

2) There are stories of people being swept out to sea.

The blue part has the same content as sentence 1, but instead uses a non-finite verb (being) instead of a finite one (were).

 

[Tarheel]

@Maybo You could insert "who were" after people in the original sentence. (It is, obviously, not needed.)