Duck Boat Investigation: Company Warned, 'Black Box' Recovered

BRANSON, MO — Ripley Entertainment, the owner of Branson's "Ride the Ducks" attraction, was warned about their duck boats' design flaws almost a year before the accident that killed 17 people, including four children and two teenagers, during a thunderstorm Thursday night, the Associated Press reports.

A local inspector wrote a report for the company in 2017 detailing how the boats' engines and bilge pumps could fail in stormy weather, and noting that the boats' canopies could make it hard for passengers to evacuate should one sink.

That assessment mirrors one from the National Transportation Safety Board after a similar accident that left 13 people dead near Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1999.

Ripley Entertainment Jim Pattison Jr. told the New York Times that the thunderstorm was unexpected, saying, "It was almost like a microburst."

But a meteorologist with the National Weather Service disagreed with that assessment, telling the paper there had been multiple alerts and more than half an hour's warning before the storm struck.

It's not clear if the company was monitoring severe weather alerts. The NTSB and U.S. Coast Guard are investigating.

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"We think [the video] will show any instructions [the captain] might have given to the passengers," said NTSB spokesman Earl Weener.

Authorities called off the search for survivors Friday morning after recovering the last of the the victims. USA Today reports that nine members of the same Indianapolis family were among them.

"I lost all of my children. I lost my husband. I lost my mother-in-law and my father-in-law. I lost my uncle. I lost my sister-in-law… And I lost my nephew," survivor Tia Coleman of Indianapolis told the local Fox station. "I'm okay, but this is really hard."

A GoFundMe campaign for the Coleman family has already raised almost half of its $1 million goal.

Over the weekend, authorities released the names of all 17 people killed:

• William Asher, 69, from Missouri
• Rosemarie Hamann, 68, from Missouri
• Janice Bright, 63, from Missouri
• William Bright, 65, from Missouri
• Angela Coleman, 45, from Indiana
• Arya Coleman, 1, from Indiana
• Belinda Coleman, 69, from Indiana
• Ervin Coleman, 76, from Indiana
• Evan Coleman, 7, from Indiana
• Glenn Coleman, 40, from Indiana
• Horace Coleman, 70, from Indiana
• Maxwell Coleman, 2, from Indiana
• Reece Coleman, 9, from Indiana
• Leslie Dennison, 64, from Illinois
• Bob Williams, 73, from Missouri
• Lance Smith, 15, from Arkansas
• Steve Smith, 15, from Arkansas

Image via Southern Stone County Fire Protection District