Global Courant
A passenger who was thrown from a boat that capsized with 29 people on board while touring a dimly lit cave system said he struggled to breathe in the cold water beneath the capsized craft.
The flat-bottomed boat carrying local hospitality workers capsized Monday while cruising through a historic underground water tunnel near the Erie Canal in New York’s western city of Lockport, killing one person.
“By the time I realized what was happening, the boat was on top of me and I couldn’t find any air pockets or anything. And I’m just trying to breathe because I’m underwater,” survivor Daniel Morrissette told me. ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview that aired Tuesday.
LOCKPORT, NEW YORK CAVE TOUR BOAT SHAPES, 1 KILLED, 11 OTHERS INJURED, OFFICIALS SAY
The unidentified person who died was also trapped after the Lockport Cave Tours boat capsized. Eleven people were taken to hospitals, according to officials, most with minor injuries.
In the summer of 2014, a tourist boat is seen in New York’s Lockport Caves. Another boat in the same cave capsized on Monday, with a survivor sharing his account of the event in an interview on Tuesday. (Mark Mulville/The Buffalo News via AP)
Elizabeth Morrissette said GMA people panicked and screamed loudly when they were thrown into the water, which emergency officials said was between 5 and 6 feet deep.
Some passengers managed to get to safety. Emergency services used an inflatable boat to rescue about 16 others, firefighters said.
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The City of Lockport Police Department was investigating the accident. An email requesting an update was sent to the police chief on Tuesday.
The tours take visitors on an underground boat ride through a rough-hewn tunnel, which was blown up in the 19th century to transport canal water as an industrial energy source.
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The attraction is about 20 miles northeast of Niagara Falls.
