Monday’s incident that left one person dead and 11 injured was not the first time a tour boat flipped over inside the Lockport caves, The Buffalo News has learned.
Eight years ago, on Sept. 2, 2015, clients and employees from what is now called Our Lady of Victory Human Services were on the Lockport Cave & Underground Boat Tour when their craft capsized, sending the group tumbling into the chilly waters, according to Samantha North, a former employee who was on the boat that day.
A day after the tragic incident at the popular Niagara County tourist attraction that claimed one life and left 11 people injured, Lockport fire officials released new details of the frantic rescue effort.
A spokesman for the human services agency, John Pitts, on Tuesday confirmed the incident to The Buffalo News.
No one was seriously hurt in the 2015 capsizing. But the latest incident frustrated North, as well as the mother of a teenager who was on the boat in 2015.
“We were incensed. I was like, ‘You have got to be kidding me.’ It was exactly the same thing,” said Sheri Scavone, whose son, then 15, was on the tour boat.
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Scavone said reports of Monday’s drowning of a 60-year-old area man in a similar overturning of the tour boat brought back traumatic memories for her son, who continues to relive what happened that day.
“He remembers every detail, Scavone said. “He will not go into anything like a cave or a closed-in area.”
North, who had worked as a recreation attendant for what was then Baker Victory Services, said she is distressed about how it was handled.
The 32 people on the boat, roughly half employees and half teenage clients with one tour operator, were forced to fend for themselves in getting out, North said in an interview.
The water was as much as 12 feet deep at that point, well above everyone’s heads, and no one was wearing a life vest.
“It seemed like it took forever,” she said.
Twenty-nine people were on the boat at the time it overturned, Lockport Mayor Michelle Roman said at a news conference Monday afternoon at City Hall, including 28 hospitality workers from across Erie County and one staffer.
She said she never saw any police or firefighters at the scene.
It was difficult to watch Monday’s news reports on the latest capsizing, North said.
“I was having flashbacks,” said North, who had vowed never to ride the tour boats again.
Pitts, the spokesman for Our Lady of Victory Human Services, said he didn’t know whether and how the 2015 incident was formally reported.
Scavone and North said they couldn’t believe that Lockport city officials, including Mayor Michelle Roman, said Monday that the tour boat ride had operated without major incident since opening in the mid-1970s.
“This was not safe before,” Scavone said. “Don’t say the boat never capsized before. It did.”
Roman’s assistant said the mayor would not answer further questions about Monday’s incident and the tour operation.
The co-owner of the attraction, Tom Callahan, has not responded to repeated messages from The News.