Nine members of the same family are among the 17 people whose bodies have been recovered after a "duck boat" sank in a Missouri lake during a storm, officials have confirmed.
Divers on Friday pulled the last bodies from the wreckage of the World War Two-style amphibious vehicle at Table Rock Lake outside Branson.
The vessel had 31 passengers including children on board when a microburst storm hit on Thursday, in one of the deadliest US tourist incidents for years.
A video of the incident showed the "duck boat" being battered by waves.
The company which builds the Ducks has previously been fined for manufacturing non-compliance. Source: AAP
Duck boats have been involved in a string of deadly incidents that have killed more than three dozen people across the United States over the past two decades, by drowning and in crashes on land.
Eleven members of one family, nine of whom died, were among the passengers, according to Missouri Governor Mike Parson who called it a “heart-breaking tragedy”.
“Emergency responders and civilian rescuers helped avert an even worse tragedy as people rushed to help in extremely dangerous conditions,” Governor Parson said in a statement.
He said seven of the 14 survivors had been injured, one seriously.
The Stone County Sheriff’s Office said divers on Friday recovered the last four bodies from the sunken boat, 24m under water.
The incident began around 19:00 (00:00 GMT) on Thursday after thunderstorms rolled through the area, when two duck boats were out on the lake, officials said.
Both headed back to shore but only one made it.
People pray around a van believed to belong to victims of the "duck boat" accident. Source: AP
“From what I understand there was life jackets in the duck,” Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader told a press conference on Friday but declining to say whether passengers had been wearing them.
Rader noted that the boat’s captain survived the sinking but the driver did not.
Officials did not comment on the identities or ages of the other people who drowned but the governor’s spokeswoman Kelli Jones said the 17 victims were from six different US states.
The National Transportation Safety Board and US Coast Guard are investigating, officials said.
Pat Cox, the owner of a marina about a half mile from where the vessel went down, sent five boats and about 20 people to help with the rescue.
“These people showed an amazing strength maybe that we don’t always give them credit for,” Cox said by telephone. “They had it and they took action. And they were good Samaritans.”
The crew on the first boat was able to pull two people from the waves, Cox said: “It was all hands on deck, we did everything we could.”
'Never seen it like this'
Rick Kettles, the owner of the Lakeside Resort General Store and Restaurant, said he had never before seen such conditions on Table Rock Lake.
“I am 54 and I started coming here when I was 6 or 7 years old. I have been on my lake most of my life and I have never seen it like this,” Kettles said.
“I am trying to figure out why the boats were out there. I don’t get it, having a captain’s license myself.”
A microburst is a severe, localised wind gust, blasting down from a thunderstorm, typically covering an area less than 2.5 miles (4 km) in diameter and lasting less than five minutes.
The company that owned the duck boat, Ripley Entertainment, said it was working with families of the victims.
“Our number one priority is the families and our employees that were affected,” spokeswoman Suzanne Smagala-Potts said on Thursday.
Emergency workers patrol an area on Friday, near to where the vessel capsized the night before. Source: AP
Table Rock Lake is a 67-square-mile (174 sq km) reservoir on the White River.
Duck vehicles are modeled on the landing craft used in the D-Day invasion and used on sightseeing tours around the world.
Thirteen people died in 1999 when the duck boat they were riding near Hot Springs, Arkansas, sank suddenly.
Following that incident, the NTSB warned the boats’ canopy roofs presented a hazard, making it difficult for people, even those wearing a life jacket, to escape when the craft begins to sink.
“You drown if you do, you drown if you don’t,” said Robert Mongeluzzi, a Philadelphia lawyer who has represented victims of other duck boat disasters.
The company that builds ducks, Ride the Ducks International LLC, agreed in 2016 to pay a $1 million fine after one of the vehicles collided with a bus in Seattle, killing five international students.
The company admitted to failing to comply with US vehicle manufacturing rules.
Two tourists died in Philadelphia in 2010 when the duck boat they were riding in was struck by a tugboat on the Delaware River.
Branson is a family-friendly tourist destination whose attractions include “Dolly Parton’s Stampede” dinner theater, the Amazing Acrobats of Shanghai and a Titanic museum with a model of the sunken vessel’s front half.
