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Duck boat passenger describes storm that sank other vessel

A passenger onboard a duck boat that made it to safety recalled seeing the other boat struggling against the waves on a Missouri lake before losing sight of it. They had no idea it sank.
Credit: Linder Bob/News-Leader
In this 2000 photo, amphibious tour buses, called duck boats, cruise Table Rock Lake during Ride The Duck tours.

Branson, Missouri — Holding her 2-year-old daughter closely, Eugenia Rivera walked around the Ride the Ducks parking lot Friday morning.

She, along with her husband and kids, was on the other Ride The Ducks boat Thursday night — the one that made it to shore.

"I couldn't sleep last night. I'm still very shaken by it," she said.

Officials said Friday morning that 17 people died after one of the boats sank in Table Rock Lake during a storm Thursday.

Rivera, who lives in Dallas, said the weather was calm and the skies were clear when they first entered the water. Then the sky turned grey, it started to rain and the winds quickly picked up.

"That is when everything got weird," she said.

Rivera recalled the operator on her boat radioing to the Branson Belle to move out of the way so he could pull on to shore. At that point, the other Duck boat was still in sight, she said.

Rivera said they weren’t scared because they were so close to shore. She said her boat operator had closed the windows when it first started to rain.

"It was clear when we started the ride. We had our cellphones. None of us saw anything about a weather advisory alert," she continued.

She said they could see the other boat struggling against the waves, but no one on the boat saw the other boat go under.

She assumed she couldn't see the boat because of the high waves.

As they rode back to Ride the Ducks ticket office, ambulances passed. But still, no one realized the ambulances were responding to the other boat going under.

Rivera didn’t learn what happened or that people had died until they got back to their hotel room.

"I feel terrible," she said. "We didn't think we were in danger."

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