Survivor of Philadelphia tour boat accident calls it ’surreal;’ 2 still missing

Survivor: Philadelphia boat accident ’surreal’

PHILADELPHIA — A survivor of Wednesday’s duck boat accident in Philadelphia calls her 10 minutes or so floating in the Delaware River “harrowing” and “surreal.”

Sixty-seven-year-old Sandy Cohen of Durham, N.C., decided to take a tour while her husband, a doctor, attended a meeting.

She says it was first just an inconvenience when smoke started to roll out of the boat’s engine as it entered the water. She says the tour guide said a tug boat would be on its way to carry passengers back to shore.

She was on the phone with her husband to let him know she’d be late when she heard screams and saw a barge approaching. Within seconds, she was in the water.

Cohen says she shared a lifejacket with a Hungarian teenager until she was pulled out of the water.

Two of the 37 people aboard the boat are missing.