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An adult and a child were released from a hospital Friday, following a deadly duck boat accident at Table Rock Lake near Branson, Missouri.
Two children and two adults remained in the hospital, Dr. Shawn Usery, chief medical officer, said in a news conference covered by CNN affiliate KSPR/KYTV.
An adult and the children were in stable condition. The other adult was in fair condition.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson met with first responders, survivors and some of the victims’ families on Friday.
In a statement, Parson said he was inspired by the rescue stories and encouraged by the strength of victims’ families.
The Ride the Ducks boat capsized Thursday when strong winds and large waves swept through the area, he said.
Parson warned residents that severe storms were on the forecast for southeast Missouri today. He urged them to follow weather reports and take protective action.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the US Coast Guard are investigating the boat accident near Branson, Parson said.
An 11-member family was on the duck boat that sank Thursday night, and nine of them were killed, Missouri Gov. Michael Parson told CNN’s Miguel Marquez.
Parson described meeting with the survivors, an aunt and her 13-year-old nephew, who were still somewhat in shock and trying to figure out what had happened.
“It’s difficult to find the right words to say, other than your thoughts and prayers are with her, and comfort her as much as you can,” Parson said. It’s “tough to see them in that position.”
Jenni Schoenberger took the Ride the Ducks tour earlier this week and said she was told they didn’t need life jackets.
Schoenberger of Spring Hill, Kansas, said the tour didn’t provide a waiver to sign, but the back of her tour ticket says that the user “assumes all risk of personal injuries and property damage or loss.”
Schoenberger wrote on Instagram that during the boat safety presentation, the crew told passengers “they have never needed the life jackets before and didn’t plan on using them today.” The boat’s captain, she said, demonstrated the use of a life jacket and told passengers where they were located.”He said all of that at once, but mentioned we should protect our electronics 5 or 6 times, which makes me feel like they never anticipated the ‘loss’ they mention would be people, but that it would just be personal items,” Schoenberger said.
She said the boat’s captain told passengers the vessel had been inspected by the US Coast Guard and that he was also certified by them. The safety presentation, she said, was brief.
With CNN’s Maya Eliahou
The Trump administration reached out to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and other officials, following Thursday’s deadly boat accident near Branson, the White House said in a statement.
The White House said the President and first lady Melania Trump “extend their deepest sympathies to all those affected” by the accident.
Read the full statement below:
Curt Elleman and his 14-year-old son, Wagner, were at Table Rock Lake Thursday when they said they saw the duck boat take in water.
“Once we saw it start taking water through the front, we knew nothing was going good from there, and then it started taking water from the back right corner, and then just stuff went downhill from there,” Wagner told CNN.
Elleman said boaters on the lake immediately tried to rescue passengers as the vessel was sinking.
“The first rescuing was private boats, people that were already out there in the storm with those boats, with those ducks,” he said. “They began pulling people out immediately, and then rescue people started showing up very quickly and just kept coming and coming and coming.”
Elleman, a fisherman, said they watched rescuers pulled a man from the water and performed CPR on him.
“I hope he made it,” he said. “I hope there’s a good ending for that guy. But everybody jumped right in. It’s a tragic thing.”
Branson officials took to Facebook Friday to thank the public for the “outpouring of love” and first responders for “working non-stop,” following a deadly boat accident on Table Rock Lake in Missouri.
“The outpouring of love has been amazing! It has been a hard day, but we will get through this. With your help,” the city wrote.
Read their post:
Two small equipment failures were linked to the specific boat involved in Thursday’s accident, according to a review of the US Coast Guard’s records.
The Coast Guard inspected the boat annually. The last inspection was Feb. 12.
Here are a few details about the equipment failures:
Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader said he did not know if any of the bodies recovered had on life vests.
From witness accounts, the boat went down very quickly, Rader said.
The names of all victims are being compiled and will be released at some point, he added.
The duck boat remains at the bottom of the lake and will not be brought up today, Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader said. It may be recovered Monday.
The bodies of the four people recovered today were in the water and it is unknown if their bodies were trapped in the boat, Rader said.
The age range of the deceased range from 1 to 70 years old.
All 17 bodies of the victims have been recovered, Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Tasha Sadowicz tells CNN.
The duck boat was carrying 31 people when it sank in a storm on Thursday night.
Seventeen people are dead after a duck boat capsized Thursday night in Missouri, Southern Stone County Fire Protection spokesperson Eric Nielsen tells CNN.
The deceased include children, adults and elderly.
The bodies of all the missing people have now been accounted for.
People have left makeshift memorials on the windshields of cars left in the parking lot of the company that ran the duck boat tour.
Four people are still missing.
Branson Mayor Karen Best said she heard about the capsizing boat within 60 seconds of the incident going across the police scanner.
“We just jumped in and got involved wherever we were needed,” she told local media.
The focus right now is on healing the community and family members of the victim’s hearts, not pointing fingers on who is at fault, Best said.
The Missouri highway patrol is using sonar to view the objects on the bottom on the lake.
The divers will confirm objects found by the sonar, US Coast Guard Captain Scott Stoemer told local media outlets.
Branson was under a severe thunderstorm warning issued shortly after 6:30 p.m. (7:30 p.m. ET), about half an hour before the boat capsized. Jim Pattison Jr., president of the business’s parent company, said he didn’t know when the boat left the dock.
There were numerous reports of damage throughout the county, including trees down and structural damage, CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward said. The highest wind gust reported in the area was 63 mph.
The weather was part of the same line of storms that spawned numerous destructive tornadoes Thursday in Iowa, Missouri’s northern neighbor.
Pattison said he believes the weather was calm when the duck boat went into the water, but things quickly changed.
“Partway through coming back is when … the waves picked up and then obviously swamped the boat,” he said Friday morning.
The company has been in operation for 47 years without any incident like this, he said.
Video posted by Jennie Phillips-Hudson Carr, which she recorded from a showboat nearby, showed two duck boats rocking and tilting to the side as the lake’s ripples turned into massive waves.
Strong winds whipped waves head-on onto the boats. One of those duck boats returned to shore safely, but the other eventually sank.
“Oh my God, those poor people, oh no!” someone says in the background as the water crashes into the smaller boats.
“If there’s kids on there, those poor babies,” a female voice says.
An duck boat carrying 31 people sank on a southwestern Missouri lake Thursday evening, leaving at least 13 people dead – including children – and four others missing, officials said.
The Ride the Ducks Branson duck boat capsized and sank on Table Rock Lake near Branson, a popular family vacation destination about 200 miles southeast of Kansas City, after a storm “came out of nowhere,” said Jim Pattison Jr., president of the business’s parent company.
Divers resumed a search for the missing Friday morning, but it “doesn’t look very good for survival,” Missouri Gov. Mike Parson told CNN’s “New Day.”
“Right now, it’s a recovery effort,” Parson said.
