20 Dead After Tour Boat Sinks

Dozens More Injured When Senior Citizens Cruise Capsizes On NY Lake

(CBS/AP)  A seemingly ideal day of sailing along a calm but busy mountain lake turned abruptly tragic Sunday when a tour boat carrying a group of senior citizens overturned, killing 20 people and injuring dozens more.

The glass-enclosed Ethan Allen was carrying tourists from Michigan on a fall foliage tour when it capsized shortly before 3 p.m.

Other boaters on the 32-mile long lake rushed to the scene to try to rescue the passengers.

"We saw the boat, moved sideways in the water, and all the people alongside the boat - frantic and screaming," says Joanne Rahal, one of the rescuers at the scene of the accident. "There were more people in the boat underneath."

"I got in the boat and I did CPR to them, but it didn't help," said another rescuer, an unidentified 13-year-old girl.

CBS News Correspondent Melissa McDermott reports authorities investigating the cause of the accident are checking into the possibility that the vessel might have been knocked over by the wake of a larger tour boat.

"We haven't ruled anything out yet," says Warren County Sheriff Larry Cleveland.

The 40-foot boat was carrying a tour group from the Trenton, Mich., area, and was sailing just north of the village of Lake George, a popular tourist destination about 50 miles north of Albany in the Adirondack Mountains. With calm waters, clear skies and temperatures in the 70s, it seemed perfect boating weather.

U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, who talked with survivors at the hospital, said the boat flipped in about 30 seconds, giving victims no time to react. The sheriff said none of the passengers was able to put on a life jacket.

Adult boat passengers are not required to wear life jackets in New York, but boats must carry at least one life jacket per person.

Patrol boats that reached the scene within minutes found other boaters already pulling people from the water. All passengers had been accounted for within two hours.

Twenty-seven people were taken to a hospital in nearby Glens Falls. Some suffered broken ribs and others complained of shortness of breath. Seven survivors were to be admitted, hospital spokesman Jason White said.

He said the hospital had received 21 bodies.

Police investigators were at the hospital late Sunday to question survivors.

Dorothy Warren, a resident who said she brought blankets and chairs to shore for survivors, said one passenger told her "she saw a big boat coming close and she said, 'Whoop-dee-doo. I love a rocking boat."'

Warren said the woman did not know how she got out of the water but said her mother was killed.