PHIPPSBURG

Rescue workers helped two women back to shore Thursday after they were caught on a sand bar between tides, Phippsburg Police Chief John Skroski said.

Skroski did not have the names of the women, but said one is from Scarborough and the other from Cape Elizabeth. They were with their dog, taking photographs, when the tide caught them.

Skroski, who happened to be at the scene checking shoreland erosion, said the water was perhaps thigh high.

A firefighter used a raft to take the women back to shore at about 1 p.m., Skroski said. The women had been on the sand bar for perhaps an hour.

The shoreline near Popham Beach State Park is no stranger to turbulent tides, where winter storms caused major erosion this year.

Over the past few years, as much as 200 feet of dune has been washed away, threatening homes and the only road into the area.

“The changes that I have seen at Popham are drastic,” Skroski told a Bangor TV station earlier this year. “I can’t believe, every year, more and more of the beach is disappearing, and now we are seeing cliffs edging Route 209.”

Skroski has expressed worry that, once the weather warms up, scores of people who flock to the beach will become stranded as some sections are now underwater even at mid-tide.

In June 2010, two men saved a woman toppled by a wave who became caught in aggressive surf off Fox Island — a ledge that visitors can walk to by sand bar during low tide.

In 2011, Skroski helped rescue two women — a Georgia woman and her daughter — who were stranded on Fox Island by high tide for eight hours.

The women dialed 911 with a cell phone, attracting responders such as Skroski, the Maine Marine Patrol and the Phippsburg Department of Fire and Rescue.

“There have been several drownings between the shore and Fox Island in the past,” Skroski told The Times Record in 2011. “When I was out there, I thought about my kids. I knew I had to make it. But you do reach a point where you think, ‘Did I make the right decision?’”