A private inspector says he warned the company operating duck boats on a Missouri lake about design flaws putting the watercraft at greater risk of sinking, less than a year before the accident that killed 17 people during a sudden storm.
Steve Paul, owner of the Test Drive Technologies inspection service said on Saturday he issued a written report for the company in August 2017. It explained why the boats' engines - and pumps that remove water from their hulls - might fail in inclement weather.
He also told The Associated Press that the amphibious tourist boats' canopies make them hard to escape when they sink - a concern raised by regulators after a similar sinking in Arkansas killed 13 people in 1999.
The accident on Thursday evening on Table Rock Lake outside the tourist town of Branson also is raising questions about whether storm warnings in the area went unheeded and whether any agency can keep boaters off the water when inclement weather approaches.
"If you have the information that you could have rough waters or a storm coming, why ever put a boat on that water?" Paul said.
A witness' video of the duck boat just before it capsized suggests that its flexible plastic windows might have been closed and could have trapped passengers as the hybrid boat-truck went down. It does not show passengers jumping clear.
Survivor Tia Coleman tearfully told a news conference that the tragedy killed her husband, three children aged one, seven and nine, an uncle, a nephew along with her father-in-law, her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law. The Indiana woman said until the accident her family had been enjoying a holiday together.
"Going home - I already know is going to be completely difficult I don't know how I'm going to do it," she said. "Since I've had a home it's always been filled, filled with little feet and laughter and my husband. I don't know how I'm going to do it."
Coleman also said she believed that life jackets would have saved many of the 17 people who died, but the captain told passengers when they set out on the lake not to bother with them.
"Above you are your life jackets; there's three sizes," she said, quoting his instructions. "'I will show you where they are but you won't need them so don't worry.' So we didn't grab them."
Coleman described her own harrowing near-drowning and says she was pulled from the water by "beautiful people - angels" she didn't know who were jumping in the water to get bring people to safety.
Investigators will look into questions about the life jackets, the weather and actions of the crew, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said.
The dangers of amphibious tour boats have been a concern for years. Because they are neither entirely boat or bus they have sometimes contradictory safety regulations.
