Hometown Tragedy

Discussion Open Forum
1

We always hear about buses in India going over cliffs and ferries sinking in the Philipines. A similar tragedy just hit a town I have known all my life. It is one of the most beautiful places you can imagine, especially now with the fall foliage coloring the hills. I worked summers during my undergrad years here, saw these boats everyday and rode them many times. What a shame.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051003/ap_ … overturned

[quote]
LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. - A seemingly ideal day of sailing along a calm but busy mountain lake turned abruptly tragic Sunday when a tour boat carrying a group of senior citizens overturned, killing 21 people and injuring dozens more.

The glass-enclosed Ethan Allen was carrying tourists from Michigan on a fall foliage tour when it capsized shortly before 3 p.m. The accident on Lake George may have occurred when the boat was hit by the wake of a larger vessel, Warren County Sheriff Larry Cleveland said.

“We haven’t ruled anything out yet,” Cleveland said.

The 40-foot boat was carrying a tour group from the Trenton, Mich., area, and was sailing just north of the village of Lake George, a popular tourist destination about 50 miles north of Albany in the Adirondack Mountains. With calm waters, clear skies and temperatures in the 70s, it seemed perfect boating weather.

U.S. Rep. John Sweeney (news, bio, voting record), who talked with survivors at the hospital, said the boat flipped in about 30 seconds, giving victims no time to react. The sheriff said none of the passengers was able to put on a life jacket.

Adult boat passengers are not required to wear life jackets in New York, but boats must carry at least one life jacket per person.

Patrol boats that reached the scene within minutes found other boaters already pulling people from the water. All passengers had been accounted for within two hours.

Twenty-seven people were taken to a hospital in nearby Glens Falls. Some suffered broken ribs and others complained of shortness of breath. Five survivors were to be admitted, hospital spokesman Jason White said.

He said the hospital had received 21 bodies.

Police investigators were at the hospital late Sunday to question survivors.

Dorothy Warren, a resident who said she brought blankets and chairs to shore for survivors, said one passenger told her “she saw a big boat coming close and she said, ‘Whoop-dee-doo. I love a rocking boat.’”

Warren said the woman did not know how she got out of the water but said her mother was killed.[/quote]

:frowning:

2

That must have been sheer horror to witness. All those old folks with limited mobility… and you know a phalanx of greedy lawyers are gearing up already…

I wonder who was driving both vessels, the circumstance of the larger boat’s wake, and if any evasive action was taken by the driver of the tour boat.

Truly a sad event.

3

Just caught the story on the morning news here, very sad indeed.

4

Yeah. I know the feeling. I still remember how Estonia (the ferry) drowned in 1994, taking 852 people with it. It’s just one of those things that are supposed to happen some place far and hot, but not anywhere close to your home. :s

5

The lager boat, The Mohican, (Lake George and Fort William Henry are the real life locations for the book The Last of the Mohicans btw) is a 2 story riverboat, with a huge paddlewheel in the back. It is a massive boat. It can’t move very fast but I can vouche for the wake it creates.

Reports say the Lake was crowded, but I’ll have to wonder how close the Ethan Allen, a much smaller, glass enclosed boat was when the wake hit it. It would seem likely that they were pretty close. I mean, to tip over a fully loaded, heavy boat is not easy.

If I knew how to post pictures, I’d include some of Lake George in the fall. It makes the situation much sadder as the folks were undoubtably having a wonderful time looking at the foliage.

fortwilliamhenry.com/Activit … oliage.cfm

6

Sorry to hear about that. A tragedy is never more tragic than when it means a personal loss. We’ll all die some day, and that may or may not be all that bad of a thing, but unti then we’ll miss those we know who have gone before and have deeper sympathy for the loss of those we have met or known.

7

I used to canoe on Lake George as a kid. Terrible tragedy. August Wilson died today at age 60 too. My neighbor here in Taiwan died last week at age 54, just keeled over from heart attack in his living room, his wife having died two years earlier from liver cancer. Death is all around us. And Bali, what a tragedy!

8

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051004/ap_ … overturned

[quote]LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. - With only one crewmember and just a passenger shy of full capacity, a tour boat that flipped over and killed 20 elderly tourists was unprepared to handle the dangers they faced, authorities said.

The state late Monday suspended the operating certificates for all five boats run by tour company Shoreline Cruises, including that of The Ethan Allen, which sank Sunday afternoon during what was supposed to be a relaxing, one-hour fall foliage tour for a group of senior citizens.

The suspensions followed the determination that The Ethan Allen carried only one crewmember, 74-year-old Capt. Richard Paris, according to Wendy Gibson, spokeswoman for the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

The Ethan Allen has a maximum capacity of 50 people

9

It is awful.

We even made the national news. My husband and I were actually thinking of driving up to the lake on Sunday (we live not far away) but are glad we decided not to.

Of course, it did occur to me that, although this is a horrible tragedy, there WAS a major international terrorist incident in Bali recently and no local newscast is carrying that – only endless interviews with people who had nothing to do with the boat accident by commentators who didn’t, either. The coverage isn’t as bad as Taiwan’s (with the whole stick-the-microphone-into-the-face-of-the-grieving-widow-as-she’s-notified thing) but it’s rapidly shading over into the tasteless at times.

The other thing is – and I’m not attempting to blame the victims, mind – it’s 110% certain that when those poor people got on the boat, someone said, “You are not required to wear a life jacket as you are over 12 years old, but we do suggest that you put one on and keep it on for the duration of our cruise.” Of course the Mohican is such a familiar sight on that lake, and seemed so harmless, that as we see most people just don’t pay attention to this sort of thing. :frowning:

10

That’s exactly what I was thinking. What kind of a wake can capsize a fully loaded, 40ft long tourist boat? :astonished:

Tragedy for sure.

Oh please don’t. I’m currently trying really hard to forget that seasons exist … with leaves … and cool breezes … and the smell of wood smoke in the … damn you!

11

Interesting results from the preliminary investigation. The boat might of capsized because the Coast Guard assumes the average weight of an individual at 140 lbs.

In otherwords, this accident may have been caused by too many fat people on the boat.

cnn.com/2005/US/10/04/boat.o … index.html

Hmm…I wonder if this assumption is also used in the airline industry?

12

wnyt.com/x5396.xml?ag=x156&sb=x183

[quote]The captain of the Ethan Allen says he’s done nothing wrong and he hopes to be guiding boats on Lake George again next summer.

Richard Paris says when the investigation is complete he’ll get his boating license back and hopes to get back on the water.

Paris says his company’s attorneys have told him not to talk to reporters. But in a brief conversation with this reporter Friday afternoon, the Ethan Allen’s 74-year-old captain says he’s doing okay. Paris says he’s “gotten a lot of calls and cards” from friends offering their words of support. Of the folks who are supportive, the retired state trooper says, “Should be. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Paris submitted to a blood test earlier this week. The test will determine if he’d been drinking in the hours before the Ethan Allen tipped over and killed 20 passengers. Just after the incident, he told police that he last drank on Thursday.

He responded to news reports that he has a drinking problem, saying, "[b]I’m not an alcoholic, never have been, I never will be. I have a beer every once in a while. If I