Family confirmed the death of grandmother Leslie Dennison, who had been on the boat with her 12-year-old granddaughter Alicia... [Alicia] said she could feel Leslie pushing her up as the boat filled with water. 'She said her grandmother saved her,' he told the paper....
Harrowing footage taken by others on a different boat nearby showed their small vessel bobbing up and down in the water as water climbed up its sides. A severe storm warning was issued by local agencies at 6.30pm, 30 minutes before the boat got into trouble....
July 20, 2018
"NINE members of the same family are among 17 killed in duck-boat tragedy, as survivors reveal how they were TRAPPED inside the boat as it sank and were 'sucked' under as they tried to swim away."
The Daily Mail reports.
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59 comments:
Needs an entertainment tag.
It is surprising they didn't pass out the boat's life preservers when it was taking on water. So sad.
I'm not sure how much life preservers would have helped, as they were trapped and then (apparently) sucked under. I wondered why people wouldn't just swim away, and now (again, apparently) we have the answer - they were trapped. The limited video I've seen of that monstrosity on the water brings to mind more a tanker than a boat. So sad.
I took a duck boat tour in Philly on the Delaware two days before a Duck had an engine quit and hit a barge causing mass fatalities. I think the Marines who used these in WWII had the same general experience. The Philly tour was fun.
Ugh. How awful.
Here is what went wrong: http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2018/07/tragedy-at-table-rock-lake.html
Etienne, were those really the crew names? or were you doing the last acceptable slur, insulting people because they are from rural heritage.
Eman, I am not calling you out, just commenting on how the joke hurts.
When I was a boy of nine or ten, my father rented a little "You Drive It" boat on a Michigan lake. A storm came up while we were out and it scared the hell out of me. Those boats have low freeboard and are not very stable.
I saw the video of the "Duck Boats" which seem to be DUKWs from WWII and have a cabin added which makes it more unstable.
My recollection is the ducks at Wis Dells are not fully enclosed. Just have a canopy on top. And they go down the river along the shoreline. They are a lot of fun but my guess is the industry will soon be history.
Awful. Awful awful awful.
or were you doing the last acceptable slur, insulting people because they are from rural heritage.
Southern not rural, but trust me, you cannot slur a Southerner. You can try but it won't take because we won't let it stick. Sorry!
Duck boats used to be a big feature in the Wisconsin Dells, but little bad happens in Wisconsin... then DEVILS LAKE!!!!
An avoidable tragedy. RIP for the victims. Jail and victim compensation for the boat operators.
-sw
As someone who often takes people out on my boat on a sizable lake, these kinds of stories are kind of sobering. Not so much sobering, as stern reminders of the stakes. I study the clouds when i am on the lake continuously. It’s amazing how quick, when the point of one of those anvil clouds starts to approach, it. gets overhead and things get a little too interesting. Now I just head home as soon as I see anything brewing up to the west.
I rode one on a Boston tour several years ago. Then I rode another one at Palm Beach on the intracoastal waterway. Sort of amazed me that a WWII vintage craft like that would still be in public service.
A friend was up there on vacation and was on another- companion boat when this happened. She said they barely made it back but it was rough. If you were concerned about safety (e.g. not dying) you'd never get on one of those.
There was a severe storm warning 30 minutes before the boat went out. That says it all to me.
Those people were paying $26 for a 1-hour ride. It looks like that skewed the judgment here.
I once pulled into my slip 5 minutes before the wind went from 0 to 60. Sometimes those storms move incredibly fast.
The weather started getting rough,
the tiny ship was tossed...
Shame they didn't have the courage of a fearless crew
I can swim really well, but I would never go out on a lake or river in a boat without a life-jacket on. Not sure life jackets would have saved all of them, but if they had been wearing them before the trouble started, some of the dead could have easily escaped the boat earlier as it was taking on water. Once things go sideways, people lose the ability to think clearly because of the panic.
And not being aware of the weather is on the crew. That is criminal negligence.
Just because this contraption floated doesn't really make it a boat.
I spent a summer maintaining the Dells DUKWs and being amazed at how well those GMC trucks were built. On the ones I worked on, nothing was original, with Willys, Ford N, and Deere parts in the same drive train. The Wisconsin River is a lot smaller and narrower than Table Rock lake, and I was surprised they were allowed in Branson. On D-Day, Steve Ambrose says that, on the four foot swells, a quarter of the boats floundered and sunk, something they don't teach in high school.
Boat captain, age 66 who died is shown to be extra well tanned ... Does that still make him redneck deplorable?
Lots of postmortem caveats but it's still a tragic situation for these people and their families.
I'm just surprised the Duck Boats go across 40 ft deep water. I guess I always thought the hovered closer to shore. I'm uncomfortable enough on a boat that's built just for boating.
I have read that being sucked under by a sinking boat does not really happen.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=%22sucked+under%22+by+sinking+boat&view=detail&mid=AFA9647685BC5660F39CAFA9647685BC5660F39C&FORM=VIRE
"Ride the Ducks" lost a left front wheel, and skidded into on-coming traffic with multiple fatalities here in Seattle. The owner of the Duck mobile is an old fraternity brother. It's been a couple of years, and it is still in the courts.
Pretty easy in retrospect to see, but not easy at all for those operating the boats at the time to decide to drop the window screens in those conditions. You would have had wet, pissed passengers, but with the screens up - there was a lot of sail area to the sides of the boats. Get sideways, broadside to the wind and well... Q.E.D.
I just wonder why the boat seemed to be moving at right angles to the wind and waves. That makes it easy to swamp. And, when the going got rough, the 'captain' should have ordered life jackets to be worn.
Was the 'captain' a collage student or someone unfamiliar with DUCK boats?
As I always say--the graveyard is chuck full of people that did nothing wrong-
Too many people operate on auto-pilot.
I just wonder why the boat seemed to be moving at right angles to the wind and waves.
Yeah. It almost sounds like the guy shouldn’t have been piloting an inner tube down at the creek.
Those things have been in Branson since Branson was a little village on a two lane road leading to Silver Dollar City. I can't imagine how a 75 year old WW2 contraption that looks like it was designed by Wile E. Coyote is still able to function.
A total failure on the part of those entrusted to provide a safe experience. I often lament our litigious culture. This serves as a reminder that civil torts exist for good reason. I’m not a lawyer (obviously), so ‘civil torts’ might be redundant.
You could see from the video, (horrifying to watch), the windows were closed. The DUKW was never enclosed back in the day. Soldiers drowned because of the weight of their gear. The "canopy" doesn't look very formidable, and aluminum in that kind of blow, with waves crashing into it probably torqued them, jamming some closed. The thing is primarily a truck, and as mentioned above, that "canopy" became a sail. People panicking, scrambling about, would put the craft in jeopardy in calmer waters.
The recent Duck Boat story in Boston concerned traffic fatalities.
Theses are amphibious craft after all, with terrible corner sight lines as they amble downtown roads.
The Charles River is unlikely to capsize a boat that is more likely to run you over as a pedestrian.
DUWKs aren't really boats; they're more like floating trucks. They aren't sea-worthy, or even "big lake-worthy". If it's true that the driver/pilot told the passengers not to don their life jackets .... Well, it's probably for the best that he went down with the ship.
Larger lakes have notoriously freaky weather. Stan Rogers' song "White Squall" is horribly appropriate tonight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ4ddAgykfk
"But tonight, some red-eyed Wiarton girl lies staring at the wall,
'Cause her lover's gone into a White Squall".
I’ve been on Table Rock Lake many times. Been on the DUCKS. They should have heeded the warnings. There had already been seventy mph winds in Springfield just an hour north. But we get so many alerts out here for storms that are very locally focused and short lived that after a while you start to tune them out or figure it will miss you which most do.
If you've ever watched a squall line move across a large body of water, even from land, the experience adds to one's definition of awesome.
The same thing happened 20 years ago in Arkansas :
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/jul/20/nearly-20-years-ago-duck-boat-sank-hot-springs-lak/
A good part of my childhood was spent in Springfield, and Caplight45 is right - there are constant storm warnings that don't pan out. In retrospect, it was a manifestly unsafe voyage. I have often looked at the DUKWs for the "Duck Ride" in Galveston and thought that the tourist seating and canopy arrangement probably moved the center of gravity a bit high and created a lot of windage. As to the passengers, I am always mindful of potential points of egress from transport or structures, but there aren't always good choices available.
Life jackets in an enclosed boat would have made it harder to exit once it sank. They probably should have put them on and "abandoned ship" when it became likely that it was going to sink, but most people aren't mentally prepared to do that.
a couple of points, some of which have been made
1. A DUKW is a fundamentally a truck, not a boat. The basis is a 2 & 1/2 ton 6x6 Army GMC truck from WW2. Aluminum shell is wrapped around it to give it minimal positive flotation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUKW#/media/File:DUKW.image2.army.jpg
a single prop is driven off the rear drive train and engaged just like some jeeps used to engage their front axle drive shaft.
2. putting on life jackets inside that DUKW if the windows and roof were intact is a death sentence. I suspect, like on school buses, there was a rear emergency door. Carrying your jacket and exiting the rear would seem to be the only viable solution, but it would require more foresight by the Captain and more nerve by the passengers than were available. A trained platoon might do it, but that crowd would have had multiple people freeze in the door.
3. You get "sucked down" next to the Titanic, not by being next to a slowly settling trick body
Passengers should have been ordered to put on life jackets. It would have made it easier to recover the bodies.
The mother of the four dead children says the captain told the passengers at the outset "not to bother" with the life jackets because they weren't going to need them. I guess he can try to convince a jury that the life jackets wouldn't have helped, but I suspect he'll be headed to prison and then a lifetime of paying off a judgment.
These tragedies always bring out the pompous blowhards.
Yes, we all know if *YOU* had been charge everything would've been OK, because of your marvelous 20-20 hindsight.
The guy in charge had been piloting the DUKW had been doing it for 10 years without any problem. The Weather was almost freakish in its intensity.
Once the thing capsized, people were going to die, life jackets or not.
Life jackets just keep your head about water. They don't help you get out of a capsized DUKW.
The duck was a freak combination cobbled together to meet a need of war. It (barely) floated and (poorly) drove.
In war, like WWII, the loss of life due to the numerous compromises required may have been justified.
As a craft for a "pleasure jaunt", no thanks.
As John Farnam says, "You are own your own."
When the captain says there is no need to get on life vest... ignore him and get them out and wear them.
People just wait to be told what to do now days... but folks, stand up and do what you feel needs to be done in situations, don't wait for the 'authorities'.
Except possibly in a situation in which you are not familiar with the surroundings. I was in a possible active shooter situation last week in DC, and there was no need for me to act on my own intuition, at least not initially. I was not familiar (very) with the campus, roads, buildings, offices, units, hallways, clinics, so I looked around at the medical staff and saw varying degrees of calm and panic. Those who were calm and in a position to tell people what to do, did extremely well in keeping us updated, ushering us out of the building, and we are thankful for them. They are the ones who know the lay of the land better than anyone. There was no need for me to rely on my own intuition as it turns out. Unless my intuition was to tell myself to stay calm and follow Nurse X, which is what we did. Fortunately, there was no active shooter, but the whole thing, in addition to being an inconvenient time waster, was of course stomach churningly disgusting.
Ann, it was not really just a matter of the captain making a bad call to go out in bad weather. That was a part of it. But it was the fact that he was piloting a barely floating tank, that is not designed to do well in inclement weather. The accounts I read indicated that storms are very frequently predicted for that area/lake but often they don't pan out, so people don't rely on the forecasts that much. I think the mistake is taking out a tank on a day that is not predicted 100% to be perfect.
"These tragedies always bring out the pompous blowhards."
Name one.
They are a lot of fun but my guess is the industry will soon be history.
Yeah. Previous deaths in the water in Arkansas. Deaths on land in Seattle in 2015. And now this.
If regulations won't shut them down, the lack of people wanting to board a death trap will.
"Ride the Ducks" lost a left front wheel, and skidded into on-coming traffic with multiple fatalities here in Seattle.
Yep. Aurora Bridge. September, 2015. I remember it well.
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