Barge Strikes Tourist Boat in Philadelphia
Share with others:
PHILADELPHIA -- A placid Wednesday afternoon on the Delaware River here suddenly turned into mayhem when a barge plowed into an amphibious vessel packed with tourists that had stalled in the water.
The crash sent 37 people aboard the "duck boat" into the water just off Penn's Landing, a popular waterfront district, where people scrambled to help panicked passengers bobbing in the river.
Two people, a 16-year-old girl and a 20-year-old-man, were missing Wednesday evening, officials said, but search and rescue efforts were still under way.
Before the crash, a fire broke out on the tourist boat, causing it to shut down, said Charles H. Ramsey, the Philadelphia police commissioner. "The boat was sitting in the water waiting for help," he said.
That was when the city-owned barge, hauling sludge and pulled by a tugboat, ran into the tourist boat, which sank immediately, the authorities and witnesses said.
A four-person team from the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington arrived here late in the day to take over investigation of the accident, with more investigators set to arrive in the morning.
"This is a very serious situation," Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia said. "We're going to do everything we can to obviously get to the bottom of it."
One significant question is whether the crew of the disabled duck boat made a distress call to alert other boats in the area.
Capt. Todd Gatlin, a Coast Guard official, said that the agency monitored broadcasts on an emergency channel normally used for this purpose and that it had picked up only a transmission from the boat in which it was hailing another vessel, not making a call for help.
Another issue is how visible the duck boat was on the water to vessels bearing down on it. Captain Gatlin said there had clearly been certain areas that were below the sightline of the tugboat operator.
The tugboat, owned by K-Sea Transportation and under contract to the city, had five crew members on board, a company spokesman said, but they were not injured. The barge was unmanned and did not have a motor, officials said.
Meg Scharpf, 40, of Phoenix, who was visiting the city with her husband and two sons, said she had watched the crash from the waterfront.
First Published July 8, 2010 2:01 am
