Kentucky Boat Accident Lawyer

Alcatraz night tours make former prison even spookier

A hard wind whooshed and rattled a window in the hospital cell where Robert Stroud, "The Birdman of Alcatraz," spent 11 of his 17 years when this was the dankest, hardest federal prison in the U.S.

Yet, most of the more than one million tourists who visit the famous former prison annually never get to experience Alcatraz Island at night or see its spooky, decrepit hospital - experiences unique to the night tour. At dusk the island prison that housed some of the nation's most notorious criminals - including Al Capone and the recently rearrested James "Whitey" Bulger, who was on The Rock for bank robbery from 1959-1963 - is often enshrouded by fog, and the lamps on the grounds emit a ghostly glow.

The difference from the daytime tour is apparent from the start. The ferry from San Francisco motors slowly around the west side of the isle, passing decrepit buildings surrounded by Alcatraz's new residents: black Brandt's cormorants, Western gulls and the other birds that have made their home there since U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy shuttered the prison in 1963.

"This is a little eerie," said Gerard Lang, 28, who was visiting from Covington, Kentucky "You kind of feel like you're heading to prison yourself."

After leaving the boat, visitors begin a winding ascent past the prison's official sign, where a faded "Indians Welcome" written in red paint is still visible, remnants of the Native American occupation of the island from 1969 to 1971. The island became a national park in 1972.

"You're following in the footsteps of every federal prisoner who ever came here," said Eric Knackmuhs, a Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy guide.

Passing the guano- and rust-covered buildings that once housed the families of prison guards, the park's employees tell of a failed Friday the 13th , 1939, escape attempt - one of many escape attempts recited in gripping detail that are not included on the daytime tour.

Once inside the prison, the audio tour features stories from ex-inmates and former prison guards in their own voices.

The tour leads visitors through D Block, or solitary confinement, where you can stand inside a dark cell and listen to the voices of inmates who spent time there. Close your eyes and you can sense the isolation, the desperation.

Summer Boating in Kentucky - Louisville Injury Attorney Blog

Every year at this time, boating looms large for thousands of people in Kentucky and, as people hit the water for fishing and other recreational activities, they do so with constant reminders from boating officials and law enforcement agencies to exercise extreme caution when out on the state's river, lakes and dams.

A steady roll call of boating accidents throughout the summer months reinforces that message. Recently, for example, a speed boat participating in a race on the Ohio River collided with a safety rescue boat and ejected all three of its passengers. Four people were injured in the collision, one of them seriously. Two of them were flown to the University Hospital in Louisville for treatment.

What especially concerns safety officials is alcohol consumption or, as one Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources ("KDFWR") spokesperson puts it, "drinking and what it does out on the water."

What it does is affect a boater in ways quite different from a motorist in a car. Experts cite elements such as sun, rain, wind, various noises, boat and water vibrations and choppy and rolling movements. Although these have a cumulative effect on a boat operator under any circumstances, they exert especially powerful influences on one who has been drinking.

Most centrally, they induce fatigue and impair judgment. According to a prominent boat safety website, a boat operator with a blood-alcohol level above 0.10 percent (the legal limit is 0.08 percent) is 10 times more likely to die in a boat accident than an operator who has not been drinking at all.

A KDFWR official says that nearly half of all boating deaths on Kentucky waters involve alcohol use.

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