The mayor of Lockport said a 2015 incident in which a Lockport Cave tour boat overturned was reported to police at the time, but she and other city officials were unaware of the incident or its severity until it was first reported by The Buffalo News on Tuesday.
The 2015 incident is strikingly similar to the capsizing of a cave tour boat Monday, which killed one Niagara County man, Harshad Shah, and injured 11 other people.
Lockport Mayor Michelle Roman had told reporters Monday afternoon that the tour had operated “without incident” since the 1970s after inquiring with “the entities involved” to determine if there had been any previous accidents on the tour.
People are also reading…
“At that time no one believed there had been any previous incidents, therefore I unintentionally made the incorrect statement that the facility had no history of any incidents,” Roman said in an email to The News late Wednesday. “I apologize for misspeaking. I always try to be as accurate as possible with these matters.”
Lockport police officers “did take down information” in September 2015 regarding a “boat tipping and a few people going into the water due to not following protocols, but not of a capsized boat,” according to Roman.
Officials from the Thruway Authority, which oversaw the State Canal Corp. until 2017, took that information and stated that they would follow up, the mayor said.
“As far as we can determine at this time, the city never received any follow-up written notification that any violations of safety occurred from the Thruway Authority,” Roman said.
A spokesperson for the Canal Corp. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Thruway Authority said the agency had no records of ever having investigated the 2015 incident.
Roman added that Lockport police are following up on previous reports as a part of their investigation into Monday’s fatal incident after learning of the “new information presented by the press.”
Neither Roman nor Lockport Police Chief Steven Abbott was in office at the time of the 2015 incident.
Roman has been mayor of Lockport since 2018, when she won a special election for the seat. Abbott, a longtime Lockport police officer, became chief in 2019.
Monday’s fatal capsizing, which is still under investigation, has raised questions about what, if any, government entities were responsible for regulating the tour.
Representatives for Gov. Kathy Hochul and Niagara County on Wednesday had said their respective levels of government aren’t responsible for safety inspections of the wooden, flat-bottomed boat used in the cave tour.
A representative for the State Comptroller’s Office identified the state Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Department as potentially being the authority responsible for inspecting the boats used in the tour.
The Parks Department regulates “public vessels,” which are “any mechanically propelled vessel” operated on solely state waters for commercial purposes. A State Parks official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
News Staff Reporter Stephen Watson contributed to this report.
