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Survivor of Missouri boat disaster says passengers told not to put on life jackets Survivor of Missouri boat disaster says passengers told not to put on life jackets
(about 9 hours later)
An Indiana woman who lost nine members of her family, including her children and husband, when an amphibious boat carrying tourists capsized and sank on a lake during a thunderstorm said on television that the captain of the vessel told passengers not to put on life jackets. A survivor who lost nine of her relatives when the duck boat they were travelling aboard on an US lake has said the captain told passengers not to bother putting on life jackets.
The Ride the Ducks boat sank on Table Rock Lake in Branson, south-west Missouri, on Thursday evening. Tia Coleman told the Indianapolis television station WXIN that she and a nephew were the only survivors among 11 relatives on the boat, which went down in bad weather on Table Rock lake in Branson, Missouri, on Thursday, killing 17 people.
Tia Coleman told an Indianapolis TV station that she and her nephew were the only survivors from 11 members of their family who were on the amphibious vehicle when it sank. Coleman said she had lost all her children in the deadliest accident of its kind in the US in nearly two decades. She also said the captain had told passengers they would not need life jackets. By the time of the accident it was too late, she said.
“I lost all my children, I lost my husband, I lost my mother in law, I lost my father in law, I lost my uncle, I lost my sister in law – she was my sister – and I lost my nephew. I’m OK, but this is really hard,” Coleman told Fox 59 from her hospital bed in Branson. Ripley Entertainment, the owner of Ride the Ducks of Branson, was yet to respond to Coleman’s claims on Saturday.
She said her husband would “want the world to know” that when they were in the water the captain of the vehicle told them not to put their life jackets on, an action she believed had cost lives. The company’s president, Jim Pattison, told CBS on Friday that the boats had life jackets on board but passengers were not legally required to wear them.
“The captain told us ‘Don’t worry about grabbing the life jackets, you won’t need them,’ so nobody grabbed them because we listened to the captain and he told us to stay seated,” Coleman said. “However in doing that, when it was time to grab them it was too late. I believe that a lot of people could have been spared.” It has been claimed that Coleman’s family would not have been on the ill-fated trip but for a ticket mix-up.
A spokeswoman for the Cox medical center in Branson said four adults and three children arrived at the hospital shortly after the incident. Two adults were in critical condition and the others were treated for minor injuries, Brandei Clifton said. Tracy Beck, of Kansas City, Missouri, said she recalled the family members waiting in line. After they stopped for a picture, she said a ticket inspector realised that they should have boarded at a different location and reassigned them.
Sheriff Doug Rader of Stone county said stormy weather probably made the boat capsize. Another duck boat on the lake made it safely back to shore. The Branson community hosted two vigils on Friday night, one in the car park outside the duck tour business and another at a local church. The Rev Zachary Klein told mourners that he had no words of comfort to offer the families of victims “because there simply are no words to comfort them”.
Rader said during a news conference on Friday that he believed the boat sank in 40ft (12m) of water and rolled into 80ft of water. An initial investigation into the accident has blamed thunderstorms and winds that approached hurricane strength, but it is not clear why the amphibious vehicle had ventured on to the lake in the first place. The risk of severe weather was apparent hours before the boat left shore.
Rader said an off-duty sheriff’s deputy working security helped rescue people. The National Weather Service in Springfield, about 40 miles north of Branson, issued a severe thunderstorm watch for its immediate area on Thursday, saying winds of up to 70 mph were likely. It followed up at 6:32pm with a severe thunderstorm warning for three counties that included Branson and the lake. The boat went down about 40 minutes later, shortly after 7pm.
He said the driver of the Ride the Ducks boat died but the captain survived. “When we issue a warning, it means take action,” said meteorologist Kelsey Angle.
Steve Lindenberg, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Springfield, Missouri, said the agency issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the Branson area on Thursday evening. Lindenberg said winds reached speeds of more than 60mph (100km/h). “It’s a warning telling people to take shelter,” he said. Suzanne Smagala, a spokeswoman for Ripley Entertainment, said the company was assisting authorities with their inquiries. She said it was the company’s only accident in more than 40 years of operation.
“There’s nothing to slow down winds in an open area.” Pattison told CBS the boat “shouldn’t have been in the water” given the conditions on the lake.
Suzanne Smagala with Ripley Entertainment, which owns Ride the Ducks in Branson, said the company was assisting authorities with the rescue effort. Smagala added this was the Branson tour’s only accident in more than 40 years of operation. “To the best of our knowledge, and we don’t have a lot of information now, but it was a fast-moving storm that came out of basically nowhere is sort of the verbal analysis I’ve got,” he said.
Video believed to be of the boat sinking was posted on YouTube showing the craft fighting strong wind and high waves before its nose goes under the water line. Two crew members and 29 passengers were aboard the pleasure cruise. Seven of the 14 survivors were hurt when the vessel sank. The captain survived, authorities said.
Donald Trump said on Twitter that his “deepest sympathies” were with those affected in the “terrible boat accident”. “Such a tragedy, such a great loss.” Brayden Malaske, of Harrah, Oklahoma, boarded a replica 19th-century paddle-wheeler known as the Branson Belle on the same lake just before the storm hit.
Branson is about 200 miles (320km) south-east of Kansas City and is a popular vacation spot for families and other tourists, with entertainment ranging from theme parks to live music. A tornado that went through downtown Branson in 2012 destroyed dozens of buildings and injured about three dozen people, but killed no one. At the time the water seemed calm and no one was worried about the weather but “it suddenly got very dark,” he said.
Duck boats, which can travel on land and in water, have been involved in other deadly incidents in the past. Five college students were killed in 2015 in Seattle when a duck boat collided with a bus, and 13 people died in 1999 when a duck boat sank near Hot Springs, Arkansas. A video Malaske shot from the deck of the Belle shows the duck boat struggling through the choppy lake, with water only inches from its windows.
Safety advocates have sought improvements since the Arkansas deaths. Critics argued that part of the problem is that too many agencies regulate the boats with varying safety requirements. Originally designed for the military to transport troops and supplies in the second world war, duck boats have been involved in other serious accidents in the past, involving the deaths of more than 40 people since 1999.
Duck boats were originally used by the US military in the second world war to transport troops and supplies, and later were modified for use as sightseeing vehicles. “Duck boats are death traps,” said Andrew Duffy, a lawyer 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.”
Five college students were killed in Seattle in 2015 when a duck boat collided with a bus, and 13 people died in 1999 when another sank near Hot Springs, Arkansas.
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