13 Killed When A Tourist Boat Sank

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

This Friday at noon, the death toll rose to 17 after the sinking of a duck boat vehicle in the waters of a lake in Missouri.

The incident occurred after the amphibious vehicle belonging to the Ride the Rucks Branson company this Thursday afternoon from a dock on Table Rock Lake, near Branson County.

Suddenly, around 6:30 pm, and almost out of nowhere - according to witnesses reported - a storm broke out causing a strong wave with very strong winds. At around 7:10 p.m. the vehicle was wrecked.

According to multiple reports, the Stone County Fire Department had issued an alert to the possibility of a storm.

Several minors were on board the vehicle and videos circulating on social networks show how the vehicle tried to break through the strong waves to return to the lake shore.

"The waves came out of nowhere," Jim Patterson, president of Ripley Entertainment, the company that manages these vehicles, exclaimed to CNN. According to meteorological reports, the storm triggered winds that reached 63 miles per hour and as a result, multiple damages and fallen trees were recorded.

The local KOMU station reports that when the storm struck there were two “duck boats” on the lake and that only one of them managed to get back to the mainland.

According to CNN, the Coast Guard continues the rescue and this Friday a team from the National Transportation Security Board will travel to the area to investigate the events.

The names of the 17 victims have not been released yet, however, the driver of the vehicle, who is hospitalized, is known to be among the survivors. Another 14 other people survived and seven of them have serious injuries.

For his part, the governor of the state of Missouri, Mike Parson, said that "there is little hope that there will be more survivors."