Posted on 07/19/2018 10:42:03 PM PDT by Mozilla
BRANSON — Eleven people, including at least one child, are dead after an amphibious duck boat capsized Thursday evening on Table Rock Lake.
At least seven other passengers were injured, including one in serious condition.
Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader updated the casualty information just after 11 p.m. Thursday. The Ride the Ducks tourist boat sank near the Showboat Branson Belle with a reported 31 people on board.
Rader said emergency personnel were still searching for at least five people.
CoxHealth said in a statement victims were being treated at Cox Branson. Spokeswoman Kaitlyn McConnell said the patients were a mix of adults and children. She said the hospital routinely practices for emergency events like this and Thursday night was an all-hands-on-deck situation.
(Excerpt) Read more at ky3.com ...
You can tell from the video that it’s taking on water. Lot of time dipping to water line at bottom of canopy.
In this particular case a life vest only helps if you get out before it goes down. They were trapped under canopy. Limited exits.
Luck IMHO
All it was going to take was 2 waves back to back close enough together and they were swamped...
That water was WAY too rough to be taking out one of those craft loaded down with joy riders out. Now weather can turn on a dime, so they may just have been too far out when it turned to get back.
Sara Forhetz
@SaraForhetzNews
4m
7:20am update: Two more bodies recovered. 13 dead so far. 4 still missing.
I was in Branson 3 weeks ago with a cousin that lives near there. She says...Let’s ride the Ducks! I said...Heck no!
She thought they looked like fun but me being an ocean gal just couldn’t see the fun in them anyway.
By the way, I’ve been to Branson twice now and really don’t like it at all.
Narrow beam
Shallow draft
Low freeboard
Multiple hull penetrations protected by ancient surplus rubber boots
Inadequate dewatering systems
No high water alarms
No added buoyancy
Restricted passenger egress
Poor maintenance
Unskilled operators
Ride at your own risk!!!
Hard to say. It very well may have been taking on water due to the waves, making the boat even lower in the water, less manouverable and more likely to take on water. Add to that a shifting load as people headed for exits and a sinking could look like a capsize.
Hardly matters to the victims but an investigation will uncover the facts.
This is horrific.
Knowing what I know about boats and the marine environment, my policy is to not allow my children on boats, ever, unless said boat remains dockside. This includes Sea Doos. Especially Sea Doos.
Maybe when they are older I will reconsider.
Apparently this was not a WW2 DUKW but a more modern copy.
Those Midwest storms can blow up fast.
News conference in a minute or so http://www.ky3.com/livestream/
That’s what I think happened, is the stormfront moved in with straight line winds, and it it probably slowed down the Duck’s progress being able to make it back to shore. You could see both boats were completely unable to make progress against the wind. Somehow the one made it back.
It’s a compilation of everything that can go wrong-did go wrong. Boat had limited exits, none of the passengers were donning PFD’s, a gust front along the line of severe storms created straight line winds that apparently exceeded 80MPH. Assuming that winds were nearly that high, that’s sufficient wind to create whitecap waves on a normally flatwater lake.
if the boat didn’t capsize but was just swamped and sunk, the canopy was probably more of an issue than lack of PFD.. at least for passengers who could swim. I would think...
If you are under that canopy and the boat is going directly down fast, you are getting pulled down with it.
I believe this is what happened to one of these a few years back... sunk and I believe the passengers were in PFD’s, but they could not get out of the boat fast enough...
This happened just 4 days after I got home from vacation in Branson. We had discussed going on the Branson Belle, but we have never rode the ducks. Granddaughter is not enthused with water, so we went to Ripley’s and some movies instead.
I grew up about 30 min. north of the area. Severe weather and tornadoes are common place. However, this time of the year, it’s usually pretty dry, hot, and sunny. Weather for July in Mo. where we live has had more rain than usual.
17 dead. They found the four missing people.
. Just awful.
Most recent article I’ve seen is now reporting 17 dead. Prayers up for survivors and families of victims.
Looking at the television footage, it looks like the captain took the craft out into a driving gale.
First things first: Thoughts and prayers for all those that lost loved ones in this tragedy.
From the video by the way it was sitting so low in the water just before she capsized (which wasn’t shown) it sure looks like he got swamped. Those DUKW’s are so heavy with a set of wheels and axles sticking down into the water flotation is already an issue. If there wasn’t a bilge pump and/or if it wasn’t functional or running that would have been a major contributing factor.
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