Inspector warned tour company of dangers
A private inspector said yesterday 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 said 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 on Friday on Table Rock Lake outside the tourist town of Branson 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.
A witness’ video of the duck boat just before it capsized suggests that its flexible plastic windows might have been closed and could have trapped passengers as the hybrid boat-truck went down. It does not show passengers jumping clear.
The craft are called duck boats because they were invented for the US Army during World War II and were called DUKWs. The manufacturer’s code for a type of military wheeled amphibious landing-craft (D means 1942, U means utility (amphibious), K means all-wheel drive, W means two powered rear axles).
‘‘The biggest problem with a duck when it sinks is that canopy,’’ Paul said. ‘‘That canopy becomes what I’ll call a people catcher, and people can’t get out from under that canopy.’’
Since 1999, duck boats have been linked to the deaths of more than 40 people, with a troubled safety record on the road and water alike. Their height can obscure cars, pedestrians or bicycles from a driver’s view, and maintenance problems can be severe. 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 August 2017.
The US Coast Guard said the boat that sank was built in 1944 and had passed an inspection in February. But Paul said the boat would have been heavily modified to make it longer so that only part of it dates to World War II.