McCaskill says she is proposing legislation to prevent another duck boat tragedy

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill on Tuesday told colleagues she is working on legislation to ensure that another duck boat tragedy like the one that killed 17 on Table Rock Lake in Missouri last week never happens again.

“I’m in the early stages of drafting legislation with input from the NTSB and the Coast Guard to require that the design issues with these passenger vessels be addressed and that the boats that are not compliant be taken out of service until they can be compliant,” the Missouri Democrat said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

“I want this to be done in a way that makes sense. But I don’t think it makes sense for us to wait another year to address some of these glaring issues in terms of passenger safety.”

At a news conference, Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, was circumspect about McCaskill’s legislation.

“I want everything we do to be fact-based, and we’re still in that stage,” said Blunt, who also addressed the Senate Tuesday. “We don’t necessarily have to wait for the investigation to be concluded, but I’m not prepared to rush to a judgment here in the near future when we’ve got two dozen people trying to figure out what happened. I hope that they will be forthcoming with that information as they collect it.”

While weather conditions on Table Rock Lake were dangerous on Thursday, McCaskill said there are inherent dangers in the amphibious vehicles.

“How do we know this? Because it’s been investigated before. We’ve had 40 deaths associated with the duck boats since 1999, yet there has been little done to address the inherent dangers of these amphibious vehicles.”

She referred to a similar duck boat tragedy that occurred in 1999 on Lake Hamilton near Hot Springs, Ark., that killed 13. The National Transportation Safety Board made recommendations in 2002 to prevent another such tragedy, but none were implemented.

McCaskill noted that the Lake Hamilton investigation found several factors had contributed to the deaths, including a lack of adequate buoyancy to prevent the boat from sinking, a lack of oversight by the Coast Guard and the canopy on the boat.

“The canopy serves as a trap,” she said. “If they take on water and are sinking, people who are trying to get out have no easy way to escape the sinking vehicle because the canopy traps them within the vehicle.”

Life jackets also were a problem in the 1999 case, she said.

“If someone has a life jacket on and one of these vehicles goes down in the water, they get trapped against the roof even more because the buoyancy of the life jacket holds them against the roof,” she said.

The NTSB recommended in its 2002 report that duck boat operators remove canopies to allow passengers to escape during an emergency and require riders to wear life jackets. The agency also said the boats should be equipped with backup buoyancy to keep boats afloat in the event of flooding.

“The NTSB recommendations were pretty straightforward,” McCaskill said. “Unfortunately, nothing happened as a result of those recommendations. We think their past recommendations are reasonable and common sense.”

The biggest problem that needs to be addressed, she said, is the backup buoyancy on the boats.

“And if they can’t do the buoyancy in a really timely basis,” she said, “at a minimum remove the canopies if they are going on the water, so there’s an opportunity for people to escape what is a sinking coffin — which was a sinking coffin for way too many people last Thursday.”

McCaskill said those who boarded the duck boat last Thursday were doing so because they were hoping to have a great time.

“That is probably a cruel irony of this situation,” she said. “They weren’t taking a bus on their way to work. They weren’t taking a plane on a business trip. They were enjoying a beautiful location with their family in the middle of what should be a care-free moment, and it turned deadly and tragic.

“And we need to come together and try to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.”

In addressing his Senate colleagues Tuesday, Blunt shared details about each of the victims, starting with the Coleman family of Indianapolis, which lost nine family members when the boat sank during a severe storm. Only two survived.

Both McCaskill and Blunt met with investigators Friday in Branson.

“As we were done with that meeting and looking out at placid Table Rock Lake,” Blunt said, “it was hard to remember that was the same lake that was in videos of what happened the day before.”

Blunt said he and McCaskill also were looking into what mental health counseling was available “to not only people who survived the accident but also the people who responded.”

He said the investigation would focus on several concerns.

“And the questions would be, I think, did the Coast Guard do what they were supposed to do?” he said. “Did the operators do what they were supposed to do? Did the equipment do what it was supposed to do? And certainly we’ll be looking carefully at the report to decide what needs to happen as a result of that report. Certainly this is an accident we wouldn’t want to see happen ever again.”

The Star’s Bryan Lowry contributed to this report

This story was originally published July 24, 2018 at 4:19 PM.