At least 11 people were killed Thursday night when a tourist boat capsized in a southern Missouri lake as powerful thunderstorms passed through the Midwest, the authorities said.
The amphibious boat, or duck boat, overturned in Table Rock Lake near Branson, Mo., around 7 p.m. as winds exceeded 60 m.p.h.
Sheriff Doug Rader of Stone County said the duck boat sank to the bottom of the lake, and that seven passengers were taken to a hospital. Two people were in critical condition at Cox Medical Center Branson late Thursday, the hospital said.
Some of the dead were children, the sheriff said late Thursday night, and about five passengers were still missing. "We had several people who made it out safely," he added.
He told the local news outlet KY3 that there had been 31 people on board.
A sheriff's deputy was on the scene when the accident happened and he was assisting in the rescue, the sheriff said.
There were two duck boats on the water during the storm, and both were returning to land. "The first one made it out, and the second one didn't," Sheriff Rader said, adding that the boat capsized because of strong winds.
The sheriff said that there were life jackets on board the boat that sank, but that he did not know if people were wearing them.
Ripley Entertainment owns the boat, having acquired the Ride the Ducks attraction in Branson last year. Duck boats can float on the water and drive on land.
Suzanne Smagala-Potts, a spokeswoman for Ripley Entertainment, said this is the first time an accident had happened at this location. "Our thoughts are first and foremost with the families," she said.
Family members of missing people believed to have been on the duck boat were directed to go to Branson City Hall.
Becca Blackstone, a manager of an Irish pub in Branson, said the duck boat tours are popular with tourists, and she has ridden them four times in her decade of living there. She said the tours, which usually last from an hour to 90 minutes, take tourists to land destinations like the College of the Ozarks and then onto the lake.
"It's just a lot of fun, normally," she said in a phone interview. "It's nothing like this. And with them going out in the storm, I don't necessarily know what that's about because it's not like we didn't know about this storm."
She said that in the four times she went on the duck boats, people were not required to wear life jackets, although the boat had them on board.
Ms. Blackstone said the accident was the "craziest thing" that had happened in the area since a tornado hit several years ago.
The episode was the result of a storm system that meteorologists said passed across much of the Midwest on Thursday.
Steve Lindenberg, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's office in Springfield, Mo., about 45 miles north of Branson, said "a line of thunderstorms" rattled both areas on Thursday night and produced winds of up to 74 m.p.h. The winds downed trees and power lines, he said.
Mr. Lindenberg said a 63-mile-per-hour wind gust was recorded at Branson's airport around 6:55 p.m. local time, though he did not know whether the winds had caused the boat to capsize.
He said the thunderstorms had since left Missouri and were moving into Arkansas.
Rod Donavon, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the agency's office in Des Moines, Iowa, said several tornadoes swept through the central part of that state on Thursday, apparently damaging a warehouse, homes and other structures.
Two tornadoes, in the cities of Pella and Marshalltown, struck within about 30 minutes of each other and were particularly destructive, Mr. Donavon said. He described them as "strong" but said the exact strength of the winds were not yet clear.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it would investigate the accident.
Thursday's episode was not the first to end with mass casualties to passengers on a duck boat.
In 2010, a barge plowed into a duck boat packed with tourists that had stalled on the Delaware River, sending 37 people into the water and ultimately killing two. In 1999, 13 people drowned when a duck boat sank without warning on an Arkansas lake.
Gabe Cohn contributed reporting.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar