Tragedy in Missouri: At least 17 people dead after thunderstorm capsizes duck boat.
17 die as storm sinks tour boat in Missouri
The duck boat was coasting through the waters of Table Rock Lake on Thursday night when the weather began to pick up. It had been a nice summer day in southern Missouri, recalled one person who was on a nearby boat, before the storm suddenly moved in.
A damaging thunderstorm quickly roared across the lake near Branson, which regularly draws crowds to tour boats and languid cruises. It delivered the punishing rain and pummelling winds forecasters had warned could be coming. The waves began to churn, rocking a duck boat that had set out with 31 people — 29 passengers and two crew members.
The storm was too much for the small boat, which eventually capsized and sank, plunging to the bottom of the lake, killing 17 people and injuring seven. Authorities said the dead ranged in age from one to 70. The New York Times reported that nine of the dead came from one family with another two family members surviving.
The nearby Cox Medical Center received seven patients Thursday. Two were adults in critical condition who nearly drowned but were expected to survive, one refused treatment and the remaining four, including three children, were treated for minor injuries such as sore ears and general anxiety.
Brayden Malaske, of Harrah, Oklahoma, was on vacation with family when he boarded a replica 19th-century paddle wheeler known as the Branson Belle on the same lake just before the storm hit bringing winds of 110 km/h.
At the time, he said, the lake seemed calm, and no one was worried about the weather.
“But it suddenly got very dark,” he recalled.
In a short video taken by Malaske from a dock, the duck boat can be seen wallowing through the choppy, wind-whipped lake, with water only inches from its windows. Dark, rolling waves crash over its front end. The footage ends before the boat capsizes.
Later, people on Malaske’s boat saw a duck boat passenger “hanging on for dear life” to the paddle wheel of the Belle, he said. The woman was rescued from the paddle wheel.
“The wind really picked up bad, and debris was flying everywhere, and just the waves were really rough,” said Allison Lester, who saw what happened from a nearby boat,
“It was just suddenly and out of nowhere,” Lester told Good Morning America.
In video captured by onlookers from the lake, two duck boats can be seen churning up and down through choppy waves, with water spraying in every direction. One of the boats lags behind the other, nosediving into the waves. A speedboat can be seen driving up behind the duck boats.
“Oh my gosh, oh no,” a woman is heard saying in the background of the video. “Somebody needs to help them.”
“That duck, I don’t know if they’re going to make it back,” a man is also heard saying in the video.
Only one of the duck boats made it safe to shore.
Marshall Shepherd, a past president of the American Meteorological Society, and professor at the University of Georgia, tweeted that the “tragedy was completely preventable.”
“This is not 1901,” he wrote. “We have satellites, advanced radars, good weather models, all shortterm weather information showed storms approaching well before the boat was on the water.”
Questions immediately arose about why the boat was out there despite the forecasts.
Jim Pattison Jr., president of Ripley Entertainment which owns Ride the Ducks Branson, said Friday it appeared to be “a fast-moving storm” that hit an otherwise placid lake, saying that some of the company’s other boats had been in the water earlier in the day. But he acknowledged that the boat should not have been out.
“It shouldn’t have been in the water if what happened happened,” Pattison told CBS This Morning in an interview Friday. “It is absolutely devastating.”
Ride the Ducks Branson is a tourism company that takes people on tours of the Ozarks through land and water using the amphibious vehicles.
Named for their ability to travel on land and in water, duck boats have been involved in other serious accidents in the past, including the deaths of more than 40 people since 1999.
Five college students were killed in 2015 in Seattle when a duck boat collided with a bus. Thirteen people died in 1999 when a boat sank near Hot Springs, Arkansas.
“Duck boats are death traps,” said Andrew Duffy, an attorney whose Philadelphia law firm handled litigation related to two fatal duck boat accidents there. “They’re not fit for water or land because they are half car and half boat.”
Suzanne Smagala-Potts, a spokeswoman for Ripley, said the boat that sank Thursday night marked the first time there had ever been an accident involving the duck boats in Branson. The company has been operating in the city for 40 years and is “a staple of Branson,” Smagala-Potts said.
“We are deeply saddened by the tragic accident that occurred this evening at Ride The Ducks Branson,” she said. “This incident has deeply affected all of us. We will continue to do all we can to assist the families who were involved and the authorities as they continue with the search and rescue.”
THE WIND REALLY PICKED UP BAD, AND DEBRIS WAS FLYING EVERYWHERE.