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BRANSON, MO — Duck boats — like the one that sank in a thunderstorm Thursday night, killing 17 people near Branson, Missouri — have been involved in a series of accidents across the country since at least 1999, when a similar incident killed 13 people on Arkansas’s Lake Hamilton.
In that case, the National Transportation Safety Board blamed poor maintenance rather than severe weather, but other aspects are eerily similar. As with the tragedy in Branson, more than half the amphibious boat’s passengers drowned, unable to escape the sinking craft. Also as with Branson, three children were among the dead.
In the Hamilton Lake accident, the NTSB ruled that a canopy likely trapped passengers on the doomed boat. Branson’s duck boats were also enclosed by a canopy.
Originally designed to ferry troops from ship to shore during the Second World War, duck boats resemble a cross between a bus and a boat. Critics have said the crafts are poorly designed, leading to a slew of accidents on both land and water.
(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.)In 2002, four passengers drowned when a duck boat sank in the Ottawa River in Ontario, Canada. The victims were wearing life jackets, but were again trapped by the boat’s canopy, CBC news reported at the time.
In 2010, a duck boat was hit by a barge in the Delaware River near Philadelphia. Two people, Hungarian students ages 16 and 20, drowned. Their families settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the boat’s operator for $17 million. On Friday, the attorney that represented the students’ families reissued his call to ban duck boats.
In 2011, a duck boat ran over a motorcycle in Seattle, severely injuring the rider and dragging him for over a block.
In 2015, five people were killed and 69 injured when a duck boat crashed into a bus in Seattle. Later that same year, a woman was struck and killed by a duck boat while crossing a Philadelphia street. Investigators blamed blind spots that blocked the drivers’ vision for both accidents.
And in 2016, a duck boat hit a scooter in Boston, injuring its rider and killing his girlfriend, who was riding on the back of the vehicle. Blind spots were also to blame. On Friday, the company behind Boston’s Duck Boat Tours issued a statement on the Missouri tragedy, saying, “Our thoughts go out to the families of all those involved in yesterday’s tragedy in Branson, MO … The incident is currently under investigation, so it would not be prudent for us to comment or speculate as to what may have caused the incident, but extreme weather seems to have been a major factor.”
“We are deeply saddened by the tragic accident that occurred this evening at Ride The Ducks Branson,” said duck boat operator Ripley Entertainment in a statement released Friday morning. “This incident has deeply affected all of us. We will continue to do all we can to assist the families who were involved and the authorities as they continue with the search and rescue.”
The search and rescue effort is now over. Authorities said shortly before noon that all bodies had been recovered. An investigation is still ongoing in Branson to determine exactly what went wrong and who, if anyone, is to blame.
Ripley Entertainment president Jim Pattison Jr., said in an interview with CBS that, in hindsight, the boat shouldn’t have been in the water. But he defended the company’s decision not to suspend tours, telling the New York Times that the thunderstorm that sank the boat “came out of nowhere,” adding, “It was almost like a microburst.“
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But a meteorologist with the National Weather Service disagreed with that assessment, telling the paper there had been more than half an hour’s warning before the storm struck.
It’s not clear if the company was monitoring severe weather alerts.
Photo: A duck boat participates in a parade in Boston, Mass. (Jim Rogash/Getty Images)