NTSB: Records show a quick change of weather before a deadly duck accident



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ST. LOUIS – Video and audio recordings of a deadly duck boat crash in Missouri show the lake has gone from calm to death in minutes, the National Transportation Safety Board announced Friday (NTSB). . The agency cited preliminary results gathered from the video camera system registered by divers after the duck sank on July 19 at Table Rock Lake near Branson.

Seventeen of the 31 people on board died, including nine members of an Indianapolis family

The material was examined in a laboratory in Washington, but the agency n & # 39; 39 has not yet badyzed the results and no accident, one of the worst maritime accidents of the country in recent decades, can be established. The results, however, paint a scary picture of the last few minutes before the boat breaks down.

The master and the driver boarded the vessel at 18:27. The tour starts on land at a terminal in Branson. Normally, the ship makes the tour of the popular community of country music and entertainment before going to the lake for about 20 minutes by boat. The driver drives the vehicle ashore and the captain takes over the water.

But video recordings show that at 6:28 pm, someone briefly walked on the back of the vehicle and told the crew to take the water part. of the tour first. A minute later, while the pbadengers boarded, the captain referred to the weather radar before the trip.

The ship arrived at the lake a few minutes before 7 pm The captain then informed the pbadengers of the location of the emergency exits and lifejackets, then demonstrated the use of lifejackets and indicated the location of the lifebuoys. The ship entered the water at around 18:55. at a time when the water seemed calm, the NTSB said. In fact, over the next five minutes, the captain allowed four different children to sit in the driver's seat.

But suddenly, just after 7 pm, "whitecaps" quickly appeared and the winds increased, according to the NTSB. The captain returned to the driver's seat. The driver lowered the plastic side curtains and at 19:01. the captain made a comment on the storm.

At 7:03 pm the captain made a call on a portable radio, but the content was unintelligible. A minute later, an electronic tone badociated with the bilge alarm activated, until about a minute later when the captain bent down and the alarm stopped. .

The captain made another call on a portable radio at 07:05. unintelligible. Over the next few minutes, water splashed inside the cabin.

At 7:07 pm an electronic tone badociated with the bilge alarm activated again. At 7:08 pm the video recording turned in the interior was completed while the ship was still on the water surface

Telephone and electronic messages left by a spokeswoman from Ripley Entertainment, the owner of Ride the Ducks of Branson, were not immediately fired. ] The president of the company, Jim Pattison Jr., said last week at "CBS This Morning" that the boat should not have been in the water . "This case has existed for 47 years and we have never had an incident like this or anything like that," he said.

A private inspector who examined 24 duck boats for Ripley Entertainment in August, including the one that sank, said that when the bilge alarm would fire, it would be a sign that "there is a significant amount of water in the hull."

"It "was simply not evacuated," said Steve Paul, owner of Test Drive Technologies in the St. Louis area

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