Inspector warned about design flaws
Storm warnings issued before Missouri duck boat accident, killing 17
A private inspector said Saturday that he warned the company operating duck boats on a Missouri lake about design flaws putting the watercraft at greater risk of sinking, less than a year before the accident that killed 17 people during a sudden storm.
Steve Paul, owner of the Test Drive Technologies inspection service in St. Louis, said he issued a written report for the company in August 2017. It explained why the boats’ engines — and pumps that remove water from their hulls — might fail in inclement weather.
He also told The Associated Press that the tourist boats’ canopies make them hard to escape when they sink — a concern raised by regulators after a similar sinking in Arkansas killed 13 people in 1999.
The accident Thursday on Table Rock Lake outside the tourist town of Branson, Missouri also is raising questions about whether storm warnings in the area went unheeded and whether any agency can keep boaters off the water when inclement weather approaches.
“If you have the information that you could have rough waters or a storm coming, why ever put a boat on that water?” Paul said.
Aspokesperson for Ripley En- tertainment, the company operating the duck boats in Branson, didn’t respond Saturday to telephone and email messages seeking comment. Ripley spokesperson Suzanne Smagala has noted that Thursday’s accident was the only one in more than 40 years of operation.
An archived version of Ripley’s website said it operates 20 duck boats in Branson and described them as “built from the ground up under United States Coast Guard (USCG) supervision with the latest in marine safety.”
Since 1999, duck boats have been linked to the deaths of more than 40 people.
Paul said he won’t know until the boat that sank is recovered from the lake whether it’s one of the two dozen he inspected for Ripley Entertainment in 2017.
Paul said the duck boats he inspected vented exhaust from the motor out front and below the water line.
He said in rough conditions, water could get into the exhaust system and then into the motor, cutting it off. With the motor off, he said, its pump for removing water from the hull would not operate.
After the deadly sinking in 1999, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board recommended doing away with the canopies and adding more flotation capacity so duck boats could remain upright and keep floating if they took on water.
The industry took little heed, said Robert Mongeluzzi, a Philadelphia attorney who has represented victims of duck boat crashes.
The NTSB called the industry’s response to the recommendations disappointing, saying companies cited the cost of engineering and installing additional flotation capacity as prohibitive.