'Keep us in prayer' says woman who lost 9 family members in sinking

BRANSON, Missouri - A woman whose nine family members were among the 17 people killed when a tourist duck boat capsized in a storm on a Missouri lake said on Saturday she is not sure if there is any way to recover from such a loss.

"Keep us in prayer. We are going to need it," Tia Coleman, who lost her husband, three children and other relatives, told a news conference from a hospital in Branson, Missouri, where she was taken after the Thursday incident.

An amphibious duck boat was carrying 31 passengers including children when a sudden "microburst" storm packing powerful winds hit Table Rock Lake outside Branson, unleashing whitecap waves that swamped the vessel before it sank.

Coleman said the boat's captain pointed out the life jackets but told those aboard there was no need for them. Coleman said if she could have reached the life jackets, she believes she could have saved her children.

She had nothing to say to the captain, who was among the survivors.

"I don't know if there is a recovery from this," she said.

At least three other people remained hospitalized in Branson in stable and fair conditions, local media reported.

Representatives from the CoxHealth Branson hospital and local Stone County Sheriff's Office did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

Federal safety officials and the US Coast Guard are investigating the incident.

A private inspector said on Saturday that he warned the company operating duck boats on a Missouri lake about design flaws putting the watercraft at greater risk of sinking, less than a year before the accident that killed 17 people during a sudden storm.

Steve Paul, owner of the Test Drive Technologies inspection service in the St. Louis area, said he issued a written report for the company in August last year. It explained why the boats' engines and pumps that remove water from their hulls might fail in inclement weather.

He also said that the tourist boats' canopies make them hard to escape when they sink - a concern raised by regulators after a similar sinking in Arkansas killed 13 people in 1999.

The US Coast Guard said the boat that sank was built in 1944 and had passed an inspection in February, The Kansas City Star reported.

Reuters - Ap

(China Daily 07/23/2018 page11)