BRANSON, MO — A duck boat that capsized on Table Rock Lake near Branson, Missouri, killing 17 people, should never have been on the lake to begin with, according to Coast Guard investigators. While the duck boat passed a Coast Guard inspection, the agency said, the certificate it issued stipulated that the boat “shall not be operated waterborne” in winds over 35 miles per hour or waves higher than 2 feet.
The boat overturned in a severe thunderstorm with winds in excess of 60 miles per hour and cellphone video shows waves much higher than 2 feet.
Investigators say “black box” recordings recovered from the boat indicate that the lake was calm when tour began, but the National Weather Service had issued multiple weather warnings more than half an hour before the storm struck.
Video from a second ‘Ride The Ducks’ boat that made it safely back to shore. It was on the water at Table Rock Lake at the same time as the boat that capsized. (Credit: Paul Lemus) pic.twitter.com/AKQmWfdoal
— Jason Boatright (@TheJasonBoat) July 20, 2018
Officials said the investigation would continue.
“The Coast Guard will conduct a thorough and detailed investigation to identify all potential causal factors associated with this tragedy,” Capt. Wayne Arguin, chairman of the Marine Board of Investigation, said in the news release.
Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board investigators are also working to determine whether the company was monitoring severe weather alerts and whether the captain and crew acted appropriately.
“We think [the video] will show any instructions [the captain] might have given to the passengers,” said NTSB spokesman Earl Weener.
(To get neighborhood coverage first, subscribe to your local Patch for breaking news alerts. You can also download the free Patch app for iPhone and Android.)Appearing as a cross between a bus and a boat, World War II-era duck boats were originally meant to ferry troops from ship to shore during amphibious landings. Even before Branson, they had a history of fatal accidents, including a similar incident that killed 13 people on Arkansas’s Lake Hamilton in 1999.
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Victims of the Branson disaster include nine members of the same Indianapolis family.
“I lost all of my children. I lost my husband. I lost my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. I lost my uncle. I lost my sister-in-law… And I lost my nephew,” survivor Tia Coleman of Indianapolis told the local Fox station. “I’m okay, but this is really hard.”
A GoFundMe campaign for the Coleman family has raised about three-quarters of its $1 million goal.
Authorities released the names of all 17 people killed:
The Associated Press contributed to this reporting.
Photo: A vehicle of one of the Ride The Ducks accident victims is seen as it has become a memorial on July 20, 2018 in Branson, Missouri. Hundreds of mourners stopped by the location to pay their respects to the victims after a duck boat capsized in Table Rock Lake in a thunderstorm on Thursday. (Photo by Michael Thomas/Getty Images)