Everything we know about the fatal Missouri duck boat tragedy

At least 11 people, some of them children, are dead and six others are missing after an amphibious duck boat capsized during a severe thunderstorm on a Missouri lake Thursday.

Here’s what we know so far:

The “Ride the Ducks” boat was carrying 31 people when it capsized shortly after 7 p.m. local time on Table Rock Lake, a popular tourist attraction near the town of Branson, according to Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader.

He said 14 passengers were rescued, with six still unaccounted for. Diving teams scoured the lake Thursday night before suspending their search due to poor light, and will resume Friday morning.

Brandei Clifton, a spokeswoman for a local hospital, said four adults and three children were brought in shortly after the incident. Two of the adults were in critical condition, she said.

The capsized vessel, which authorities said had lifejackets on board, was one of two duck boats that hit problems as a heavy storm rolled in across the lake. Video footage showed the boats struggling to make it to shore through choppy waves, with one eventually reaching land while the other was swamped.

“It was having problems through the wind," Rader told reporters. "They were coming back toward land. There was actually two ducks. The first one made it out. The second one didn't."

Branson, located about 200 miles from Kansas City, had been issued with a severe thunderstorm warning shortly before 6:30 p.m. local time, half an hour before the incident, raising questions about why the vessels were still on the lake. Meteorologists said wind speeds topped 63 miles an hour in Branson around the time of the incident and were likely higher over the lake.

The storm was strong enough to cause other damage throughout the county, uprooting trees and causing structural damage.

Duck boats are amphibious trucks that were used during the Second World War to transport materials ashore in places without port facilities, and are now widely used in sightseeing tours. They’ve been involved in fatal accidents before, including a sinking on Arkansas’ Lake Hamilton in 1999 in which 13 people, including three children, were killed.

Cover image: A duck boat is seen at Table Rock Lake in Branson, Missouri, U.S., July 19, 2018, in this picture grab obtained from social media video. (Ron Folsom/via REUTERS)