20 Die in Sinking of Tourist Boat

[eric myers 2]

October 3, 2005
20 Die in Sinking of Tourist Boat
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
A boat filled with elderly tourists on a cruise of Lake George capsized suddenly and sank yesterday afternoon under a clear sky, killing 20 passengers and injuring several more, the authorities said.

The Ethan Allen, a 40-foot, glass-enclosed tour boat, went down with 49 people aboard, only a few hundred feet from the lake's western shore, about two miles north of the village of Lake George, in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. In minutes, the accident killed nearly twice as many people as the 11 who died in the crash of a Staten Island ferry in 2003.

Larry Cleveland, the Warren County sheriff, this morning revised the death toll down to 20, after authorities on Sunday reported 21 dead. He said officials were still investigating the cause of the accident.

"We know that the captain of the boat that tipped over told us he thought he had hit a big wake, like would have come from another large cruise boat," Sheriff Cleveland said. He said authorities did not know of any other large cruise boat in the area at the time of the accident.

More investigators were arriving, he said, adding that authorities hoped to refloat the boat this afternoon.

Witnesses and officials said the boat had flipped over with startling speed - possibly swamped by the wake of a bigger boat - and plunged dozens of passengers, most of them elderly and some of them using walkers, into the cold water without life preservers. The cause of the accident was under investigation.

Brian Heart, who was canoeing nearby, said the Ethan Allen had made a hard right turn, "like he was trying to steer away from something," and "in a matter of 45 seconds, it slipped right over."

Afterward, officials of Warren County set up a makeshift morgue on a lawn beside the lake, with a row of bodies under white sheets. Soaked survivors milled around nearby as people who lived and worked in the area rushed to their aid.

"They were very shaken," said Frank Sause, an owner of the Cramer's Point Motel, which is nearby. "One looked over my shoulder and said, 'That's my wife. She's dead.' I said, 'Don't jump to conclusions, you don't know yet."

Lake George, a long, narrow finger of water ringed by heavily wooded mountains in the southern Adirondacks, is plied daily by several tour boats, most of them much larger than the Ethan Allen. On sunny weekend days like yesterday, the lake, which is about an hour's drive north of Albany within the Adirondack Park, can be a nautical traffic jam of sailboats, small motorboats, larger tour boats and personal watercraft.

Parks officials said the sinking of the Ethan Allen was the state's worst boating accident in recent memory. Jim Millard, a local historian, said he believed it was the worst ever on Lake George, and another local historian, William P. Gates, said there had not been a fatal commercial boating accident there since 1893.

The state's Department of Parks and Recreation regulates commercial boats and inspects each of them annually, Wendy Gibson, a department spokeswoman, said, adding that the Ethan Allen passed inspection in May. The accident is being investigated by the Warren County Sheriff's Department and the State Police, and officials said the National Transportation Safety Board would also join the inquiry.

When the Ethan Allen capsized, dozens of people passing a sunny Sunday afternoon on their own boats or on shore swarmed to the site, pulling survivors from the water, tossing them life preservers and plucking them from the upturned keel of the boat before it slipped entirely below the water.

The boat sank to the lake bottom in water about 70 feet deep, officials said. Witnesses said that the passengers had not been wearing life preservers, but that few on such cruise boats do. State law requires that life vests be aboard tour boats, but not that they be worn at all times.

The Web site for Shoreline Cruises, owner of the Ethan Allen and other tour boats, says it ordinarily makes short trips and follows a route that hugs the shore. Calls to the company yesterday were not returned.

Jim Quirk, whose family has owned and operated Shoreline Cruises for decades, told The Glens Falls Post-Star: "It is a tragedy and it's very unfortunate."

Wayne E. Bennett, the superintendent of the New York State Police, and Sheriff Cleveland said Sunday it was not clear what had caused the accident. They said that there had been many reports of another tour boat in the area at the time, but that they could not be sure that its wake had had anything to do with the Ethan Allen foundering.

They said the Ethan Allen's pilot, Richard Paris, whom investigators were interviewing, had not been tested for drug or alcohol use, because there was no evidence of intoxication that would warrant such a test.

Sheriff Cleveland said the accident occurred about 3 p.m. Conditions were ideal for boating - the temperature was in the 70's and it was a brilliantly sunny, nearly windless day. The Ethan Allen carried nearly its maximum load of 50 people, including the captain.

Representative John E. Sweeney, whose district encompasses Lake George and who spoke with several survivors, said there was "a very quick turn, and then the boat rolled over. They didn't have a lot of time to react."

Both the sheriff and Glens Falls Hospital, where both the living and the dead were taken, put the death toll at 21.

Fourteen of the passengers who were plunged into the water were members of a group of elderly tourists from Trenton, Mich., south of Detroit; three of them died, said Gerald R. Brown, the mayor of Trenton. The tour began in New Hampshire and passed through Vermont on its way to Lake George, and was scheduled to conclude in nearby Saratoga Springs.

"They were taking a New England color tour, is what they were doing, and this stop was one of the stops on their way home," said Patrick Hawkins, Trenton's director of Parks and Recreation. He said that he had first heard about the accident when someone called to tell him of a report about it on television.

Two of the dead from Trenton were Francis W. Wrock and Joyce Chapman, according to Mr. Wrock's son, Douglas. He said his father, a retired engineer, loved New England in the fall and wanted to tour the region with Ms. Chapman, with whom he was romantically involved.

Douglas Wrock said that just last week, he and his two brothers gave their father a birthday present, a replacement for the college ring he had lost - University of Michigan, class of 1941. "He'd worn it forever," the son said.

They had the new ring inscribed with their initials and Ms. Chapman's. "I'm glad he got it," Douglas Wrock said.

Mr. Sause and other witnesses said some of the passengers had said they were Canadian, but law enforcement officials said they did not know of any non-United States citizens aboard. Trenton is a short drive from Canada.

Dorothy Warren, who lives a few hundred feet from Lake George and was among the people comforting the survivors, said: "I heard a woman saying, 'Oh dear, I don't have my purse, I don't have my ID, I don't have my passport. How am I ever going to get back across the bridge?' "

Mr. Sause said of the survivors, "They were visibly shaken - actually, literally shaking - and very upset, very much in disbelief and shock."

The survivors were taken to Glens Falls Hospital, except for the pilot, who declined treatment, Sheriff Cleveland said. "Most patients were cold and wet, with some reporting shortness of breath, chest pains and a handful receiving treatment for broken ribs," said Jason R. White, a hospital spokesman. "All were conscious on arrival," and seven people were admitted for the night, he said.

Late Sunday night, a charter bus took a group of survivors from the hospital back to the Georgian Resort Hotel in Lake George village, where many of them were staying. Dressed in hospital gowns and scrubs, and wrapped in blankets against the chilly night air, they descended from the bus, some limping.

They emerged again later, wheeling luggage out to another bus, which carried them away. Hotel employees, some of whom were serving hot food to the survivors, would not say where they were going.