NTSB: Coast Guard ignored duck boat safety proposals

ST.
LOUIS (AP) — Federal transportation safety investigators criticized the
U.S. Coast Guard Wednesday for ignoring suggestions over nearly two
decades to improve tourist duck boats, changes they say might have
prevented last year’s Missouri accident that killed 17 people.

The
National Transportation Safety Board released a “Safety Recommendation
Report” on the July 2018 accident, when a Ride the Ducks of Branson boat
known as Stretch Duck 7 sank during a severe storm. The boat’s captain and two company executives were indicted, and 30 lawsuits filed on behalf of victims’ families have been settled.

Former
World War II amphibious vehicles known as duck boats operate around the
country as tour boats. Many, like the one in Branson, begin with land
tours before the vehicles goes onto water.

The NTSB says that
since an Arkansas duck boat accident killed 13 people in 1999, it has
repeatedly urged the Coast Guard to require the vehicles to be better
able to remain afloat when flooded, and to remove impediments to escape
such as canopies.

“Lives could have been saved, and the Stretch
Duck 7 accident could have been prevented had previously issued safety
recommendations been implemented,” NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt said
in a statement.

“It is imperative that the United States Coast Guard adopt these life-saving recommendations now,” Sumwalt said.

Coast
Guard Lt. Amy Midget said the Coast Guard issued guidance in 2000,
after an NTSB recommendation, urging its inspectors and vessel owners to
evaluate canopy design and installation and to “evaluate the design and
installation of seats, deck rails, windshields, and windows as a system
to ensure the overall arrangement did not restrict the ability of
passengers to escape.”

In addition, the guidance “emphasized the
importance of carefully evaluating proposed routes and anticipated
environmental conditions and imposing appropriate safety measures and
operational restrictions,” Midgett said.

A new review of amphibious vessel canopies is planned based on “the NTSB’s reissuance” of recommendations, Midgett said.

The
NTSB said duck boats’ low freeboard and open interior make them
“vulnerable to rapid swamping and sinking” when they are suddenly
flooded. In the Branson accident, a sudden storm caused massive waves
that poured over the boat, sinking it within minutes.

The safety
report also found that a fixed canopy and closed side curtain impeded
passenger escape and likely caused more deaths. Fourteen of Stretch Duck
7’s 31 passengers survived.

“These safety issues were identified
almost 20 years prior to the sinking of the Stretch Duck 7 and remain
relevant to this accident,” the report said.

In May 1999, the Miss Majestic sank in Lake Hamilton near Hot Springs, Arkansas. Three children were among the 13 victims.

A
February 2000 letter from the NTSB urged the Coast Guard to take
immediate action. The NTSB said the Coast Guard responded in 2002 with a
letter stating that “sufficient requirements and guidance are in place
to provide to amphibious passenger vessels a level of safety equivalent
to other passenger vessels of similar size and capacity.”

The NTSB
said it also recommended the changes to 30 duck boat operators years
ago, but just one made the recommended improvements.

The Missouri
boat entered the lake as part of a land-and-water tour despite severe
weather warnings. The dead included five children.

Tia Coleman of
Indianapolis survived the accident but lost her husband and three young
children — four of the nine victims from one extended family.

“The
duck boat and Coast Guard’s failure to act on the NTSB’s
recommendations to remove death trap canopies and improve the buoyancy
of these boats killed my family,” Coleman said in a statement through
her attorney.

Ripley Entertainment, owner of the Branson boats,
has settled 30 of 31 lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of the
accident, Ripley spokeswoman Suzanne Smagala-Potts said.

Meanwhile,
a federal grand jury has indicted the boat’s captain, Kenneth Scott
McKee, along with Ride the Ducks Branson General Manager Curtis Lanham
and the company’s operations supervisor, Charles Baltzell.

McKee
faces several charges accusing him of failing to properly assess the
weather and failing to tell passengers to don flotation devices as
conditions worsened.

Lanham and Baltzell are charged with
misconduct and neglect. Indictments alleged that Baltzell got onto the
duck boat before it departed and directed McKee to conduct the water
portion of the excursion before the land tour because of the approaching
storm. At no point after that did Baltzell or Lanham communicate with
McKee about the growing intensity of the storm, including that wind
gusts of 70 mph were predicted, the indictment said.

The
indictment accused Lanham of helping to create “a work atmosphere on
Stretch Duck 7 and other duck boats where the concern for profit
overshadowed the concern for safety.”