Passenger Of Sunken Boat: There Weren't Enough Life Jackets
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- The passengers on the power boat "Surrender" all survived the boat's sinking Saturday night about half a mile out from Burnham Harbor; the fire department says 22 were rescued, including a man with a head injury.
WBBM Newsradio 780's Steve Miller spoke with a passenger on the boat who says there weren't enough life jackets to go around.
It started as a great day on the lake - with a boat party off 59th Street - with lots of boats tied up together, says Deetria Cannon, a 27-year-old passenger on the "Surrender."
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And at one point, awhile before the boat ran into trouble, she tells Newsradio 780, they thought about putting on life jackets.
"We had started passing life jackets around, but then we were like, 'Oh, we don't have enough on here. They're all on the other boat.' Because we had two boats that day."
And then - Cannon says, the boat was hit with either a wave or ran into a current that caused it to lean.
"We were tilting further than usual, and water quickly started filling the boat. And the captain told us to shift to one side. And we were trying, and the people downstairs were trying. But the water was filling the boat so quickly, we knew that that wasn't going to work out."
So - they ended up in the water. And Cannon says she saw a flag that had been on the boat.
"I grabbed that flag and that's the only thing I used as kind of an attention-getter. We were out there during sunset. And had it been a half-hour (or so) later, it could have been dark, and honestly, nobody probably would've seen us out there."
Cannon says it was terrifying - and as she watched the boat go down - and go under, she couldn't help thinking of the movie Titanic.
