Nine members of the same family are among the 17 people who died on Thursday night when a duck boat capsized in a Missouri lake.
The Coleman family were from Indianapolis, but have not yet been formally named. Two other members of the family, who were also on the boat, survived.
One of the family members who survived the incident, Tia Coleman, told Fox 59 it was just her and her nephew who survived – and all of her children had died.
‘My heart is very heavy,’ she said. ‘I lost all my children, my brother-in-law.’
Tia claimed the captain of the boat had told them: ‘don’t worry about grabbing life jackets – you won’t need them’ – a phrase she believes cost a lot more lives than would have been lost otherwise.
‘When it was time to grab them, it was too late,’ she said. ‘A lot of people could have been spared.’
Family patriarch, ‘Butch’ Coleman was remembered on social media as a ‘community legend’, who spent more than 40 years volunteering in his community.
Nine members of one family (eight victims pictured left), who have not yet been named, were among the 17 killed in Thursday night’s tragedy, as was Robert ‘Bob’ Williams (right), 66, who was driving the boat when it went down
Bill Asher and his girlfriend Rose Hamman were also identified as among the dead by friends on Facebook on Friday afternoon.
Bill and Rose had been on a week-long holiday in Branson, and had spent their last evening away on the duck boat, friend Mary Ogborn Kientzy said.
Family confirmed the death of grandmother Leslie Dennison, who had been on the boat with her 12-year-old granddaughter Alicia, via Facebook.
Her son Todd told the Kansas City Star on Thursday his daughter, who is recovering in hospital, said she could feel Leslie pushing her up as the boat filled with water.
‘She said her grandmother saved her,’ he told the paper. Leslie is being mourned as a ‘true hero’.
Another five people were killed in the tragic accident, including Robert ‘Bob’ Williams, 66, who was driving the boat when it went down in Table Rock Lake in Branson.
Williams worked for Ride the Ducks, the boat tour company which owned the vessel. Friends and family paid tribute to him on Friday as a God-fearing family man.
Williams was the first to be named, followed by Rose and Bill, with the others – who range in age from one to 70 – are yet to be identified.
There were 31 people on the boat – 29 passengers and two crew – when it was overpowered by waves that were triggered from a sudden thunderstorm.
Leslie Dennison (second from left) died saving her 12-year-old granddaughter Alicia. She is being mourned as a hero
Texas woman Mandi Keller told USA Today her 15-year-old daughter Gillian was one of the lucky few on board who survived.
Gillian had been visiting her father, Keller’s ex-husband, when she boarded the Ride the Ducks boat.
Her ex-husband had told her those on the boat were trapped under the boat’s canopy as the boat began to sink.
Bill Asher (right) and Rose Hamman (left), were also killed. The couple were on their last night of vacation when they boarded the boat
After some time, one of the operators of the boat was able to open the canopy, allowing terrified passengers being sucked into the lake to swim to freedom.
The man told Keller the boat was sucking people downwards as they tried to swim to the surface.
On Friday, Jim Pattison Jr., the president of Ripley Entertainment which owns the boat, said it should never been on the water in those conditions.
‘I don’t have all the details, but to answer your question, no, it shouldn’t have been in the water if, if what happened, happened.
‘This business has been operating for 47 years and we’ve never had an incident like this or anything close to it.
‘To the best of our knowledge – and we don’t have a lot of information now – but it was a fast-moving storm that came out of basically nowhere is sort of the verbal analysis I’ve got,’ he told CBS news.
He added that ‘no one’ was expecting such severe weather and said the boat’s captain, who survived, had 16 years of experience.
‘Usually the lake is very placid and it’s not a long tour, they go in and kind of around an island and back. We had other boats in the water earlier and it had been a great, sort of calm experience,’ Pattison said.
He added that the captain of that particular boat had 16 years of experience with the company, Ride the Ducks.
‘You know, they have a very good record. So, again, this seems to be sort of almost a micro storm effect of something that no one was expecting to happen the way that it did,’ Pattison said.
Shocking video shows the boat being lashed by strong, massive waves for about five minutes before it became entirely submerged. It was filmed by a passenger on another boat nearby which was more sturdy. Its crew tried to save the duck boat passengers but couldn’t
Mourners left flowers on the hoods of cars which belonged to the victims and remain in the parking lot at the lake
More mourners leaving tributes on Friday. The victims have not yet been named and many are believed to have been tourists who were visiting Missouri from other states
One of the messages left on the hood of a car in the parking lot. They were not addressed to victims by name
Groups of mourners gathered to pray together on Friday as emergency teams continued to pull bodies from the water
Harrowing footage taken by others on a different boat nearby showed their small vessel bobbing up and down in the water as water climbed up its sides.
A severe storm warning was issued by local agencies at 6.30pm, 30 minutes before the boat got into trouble.
The tour departs every 30 minutes and costs $26 for an adult ticket. According to a description on a tour website, the boat is only ever on the water for 25 minutes but is an hour long and also traverses land.
As it was overpowered with waves on Thursday night, passengers on other boats nearby watched helplessly. They filmed harrowing footage of the scene which cut out just before the boat capsized.
The initial death toll on Thursday night was 11. On Friday morning, authorities resumed their search for the six people who were missing and pulled two more bodies from the water.
The boat belonged to local company Ride the Ducks, which run tours of the area on both land and water. File image pictured. The windows were up when the boat capsized. The owner of the company which runs the boat said on Friday it should never have been in the water in such choppy conditions
The incident is being described by police as a ‘mass casualty’. None of the victims have been identified.
At a press conference in Branson on Friday, Governor Mike Parson said the reason for the tragedy remained unclear.
President Trump tweeted his sympathies for the families involved on Friday morning
Neither he nor local sheriffs know whether the boat operators checked the weather forecast before taking to the water.
‘Needless to say the things that have occurred in the last 24 hours, it is a sad occasion with a lot of families involved,’ Governor Parson said.
Some of the victims were on vacation in Missouri from other states.
Authorities are now trying to contact all of the victims’ families.
There were life jackets on the boat but it is not clear if they were accessed before the vessel went down.
The boat’s captain survived but its driver was among those who died. Passengers and crew on a nearby boat, the Branson Belle, watched from the shore as the smaller boat got into trouble.
Among them was an off-duty sheriff’s deputy who leaped into the water to rescue some of the passengers on the duck boat.
The recovery effort resumed on Friday morning and six more bodies were pulled from the water by noon
Search and rescue teams (left) patrol the water as a larger, show boat called the Branson Belle (right) remains docked
A park ranger searches the lake on Friday morning before the last four bodies were found. The death toll is 17
Other passengers and the boat’s crew also tried to help while others filmed videos from the windows, helplessly watching as the duck boat went under.
The National Weather Service in Springfield issued this severe thunderstorm warning at 6.32pm, just 30 minutes before the boat got into trouble on the water. It remains unclear if the boat was already on the water by the time it was issued
Jennie Carr was one of them. She captured harrowing footage of waves crashing over the duck boat until it vanished beneath water.
‘You could see it (the storm) approaching… We looked to our left and that’s when we seen the duck, then we seen another one coming.
‘The one that sunk was having trouble, it couldn’t go very fast. The waves went over the top of it.
‘I videoed it as much as I could for as long as I could until it went round the showboat and that’s where it sank,’ she told Today on Friday morning.
‘First we really didn’t realize that it had sunk then when all the crew started running and the captain was giving orders to all the crew to get the life vests and to get out there and help them, we cried a little bit. I went to the window and I prayed and I cried. There wasn’t nothing you could do.
‘I’m sad and I want to help but I can’t help. I don’t know what to do. It was really sad that I knew some of these people wouldn’t get to go home.’
This was the scene at the lake on Thursday night as the scale of the tragedy became plain
A severe thunderstorm that rolled over the area, causing winds of up to 60mph, is believed to have caused the tragic accident (pictured: divers are on scene looking for more bodies and living passengers)
Emergency services from nearby counties rushed in to help with the rescue. They are shown in the parking lot on Thursday night
Due to a lack of light, divers wrapped up the operation about midnight and headed back to shore.
A top wind speed of 63mph was measured at 7pm, when the boat was on the water.
National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Linderberg said the winds were likely stronger over the lake, adding: ‘There’s nothing to slow down winds in an open area’.
Suzanne Smagala, of Ripley Entertainment, which owns Ride the Ducks in Branson, said the company was assisting authorities with the rescue effort.
She added this was the Branson tour’s first accident in more than 40 years of operation.
Duck amphibious vehicles have been involved in a number fatal accidents around the world in the past two decades, with some sinking or being swamped or others colliding with vehicles.
The vehicles have been involved in other deadly incidents in the past.
They include one in 2015 in Seattle in which five college students were killed when a boat collided with a bus, and one in 1999 that left 13 dead after a boat sank near Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Safety advocates have sought improvements to the boats since the Arkansas incident. Critics argued that part of the problem is numerous agencies regulate the boats with varying safety requirements.
Pictured: An aerial view of Table Rock lake, where the duck boat capsized
36 DEAD IN DUCK BOAT ACCIDENTS SINCE 1999
At least 36 people have died in duck boat-related incidents since the land-to-water vehicles became tourist attractions in the late 90s.
May 1, 1999 – 13 dead after a duck boat sank in Lake Hamilton in Arkansas
June 23, 2002 – Four dead after a duck boat sinks in the Ottawa River near Parliament Hill in the Canadian capital
July 7, 2010 – Ride the Ducks boat overrun by a barge after engine fire, killing two
April 29, 2015 – Duck boat collides with motor scooter in Boston, killing a 29-year-old woman
May 8, 2015 – Woman killed after being hit by a Ride the Ducks boat while crossing the street in Philadelphia
September 24, 2015 – Ride the Ducks boat hits bus carrying school students in Seattle, killing four
July 19, 2018 – Ride the Ducks boat capsizes in Table Rock lake, Missouri, killing 17
What is Ride the Ducks?
Ride the Ducks is a national tour operator with 90 amphibious vehicles, taking passengers on a sightseeing tour both on land and in the water.
The design of the vessel is based on the DUKW trucks used in the Second World War.
The company was purchased by Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation in 2004, and a majority interest in the company was sold to a private buyer in 2012.
In late 2017, Ripley Entertainment announced they had purchased Ride the Ducks Branson. It is believed the company only owns the Branson branch of Ride the Ducks.
Aerial: Images from the scene show debris strewn all over the road after a Ride the Ducks Boat crashed in September 2015, killing four