City gives OK for duck boats to tour again on the Delaware

Ride the Ducks tours will return to the Delaware River tomorrow with a tinkered route and new safety standards, nine months after it suspended operations because of a fatal accident in the waterway.

The city announced its approval yesterday of an operational plan submitted by the duck-boat company, following the city's rejection of a proposal for the boats to be used on the Schuylkill. The Coast Guard approved Ride the Ducks' return to the Delaware in August.

The barge the Resource, towed by the tugboat Caribbean Sea, struck and sank DUKW 34 on July 7 with 37 passengers and two crew aboard. Twenty-six people were injured and two visiting Hungarian students, Dora Schwendtner, 16, and Szabolcs Prem, 20, drowned.

Bob Mongeluzzi, one of the attorneys representing six victims and the families of the Hungarian victims, said that the only change that the city and Ride the Ducks should be concerned about is the removal of duck-boat canopies, which he called "death traps."

The canopies impede a passenger from escaping a duck boat submerged underwater, he said. "My question to the city is: Why are you allowing these duck boats to operate in the city? Did you even have the time to read the NTSB report from 1999?" Mongeluzzi said, referring to a document from the National Transportation Safety Board recommending the removal of canopies.

Ride the Ducks has "enhanced safety standards which are significant, and the city feels comfortable with them at this point," said Brian Abernathy, chief of staff of the city Managing Director's Office.

Among the changes:

* No amphibious vessel will be allowed to enter the river when there is a deep- draft vessel or tug and barge within a half nautical mile of the duck boats' operating area.

* The 30-minute route has been shortened to 10 minutes in the water. The vessel will travel a limit of 475 feet, as opposed to an eighth of a mile, said Coast Guard spokesman Capt. Todd Gatlin.

* Ride the Ducks will now work more closely with the city's police marine unit, and a marine-response boat will be at the ready to tow a disabled duck boat.

Good news for the ears of residents living in Old City and South Street: The quackers, the yellow, duck-bill-shaped devices that sound like a duck and that had been given to passengers at the outset of the tour, will be withheld until the end of the ride. The duck-boat tour in Philadelphia will be the only quackerless one in the Ride the Ducks national fleet, said local spokeswoman Sharla Feldscher.

"This accident was horrible, a tragedy," Abernathy said, "and our job is to take proactive steps to make sure Philadelphia and our visiting public are more safe today than they were this time last year."