China Ferry Sinking: Prospects Dim for Missing Passengers
Death toll is at least 13, with 14 survivors accounted for
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Rescuers look for survivors after a passenger ship carrying more than 450 people sinks in China's Yangtze River. Photo: AP/Xinhua
The fate of hundreds of people aboard a stricken Chinese tour ship remained uncertain on Wednesday, more than a day after it capsized, as the government put a stranglehold on information and angry relatives demanded answers.
Among the survivors were the captain and chief engineer of the ship—the Eastern Star—who were taken into custody by police, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. An initial investigation found the ship wasn’t overloaded and had enough life vests, it added.
Authorities raised the death toll to 13 on Wednesday, with 14 survivors accounted for, official media reported. The ship was carrying 456 people when it sank at 9:28 p.m. on Monday in the middle of the Yangtze River, the reports said. Chinese weather officials said a tornado struck the area at about that time.
Questions emerged about whether the ship’s crew was warned about the storm and what happened in the hours after it hit.
Xinhua reported that it spoke to one survivor, Zhang Hui, a 43-year-old employee of one cruise organizer, Shanghai Xiehe International Travel Agency. Xinhua said he floated downriver for 10 hours after the accident before making it to a bank. Mr. Zhang was quoted as saying wind, rain, thunder and lightning suddenly intensified after 9 p.m. Monday.
“The rain hit the right side of the ship, and many rooms were flooded. Water came in even if the windows were shut,” Xinhua quoted Mr. Zhang as saying in an interview from a hospital.
By 9:20 p.m., the report said, passengers were taking drenched blankets into the ship’s main hall. Mr. Zhang, it said, went to his room on the ship’s port side and soon felt the vessel list to a 45-degree angle before quickly capsizing. He and a colleague grabbed life vests and, by the time they slipped through a cabin window, the water was up to their necks, Xinhua reported.
Chinese authorities clamped a security cordon around the scene on Tuesday, ringing the area in central Hubei province with checkpoints, and tried to manage the information about the accident and rescue efforts. Propaganda authorities issued a notice to major state media ordering them to use reports from Xinhua and the official China Central Television, an editor with a state media organization said.
Relatives on Tuesday complained they were getting little information from officials or tour operators.
“It’s just a show by the government,” said Ji Fumin, 59 years old, as he waited for answers in a government office in Shanghai. He said his wife, 59-year-old Cai Yadi, may have been on the ship, but he couldn’t confirm it. “I don’t think it’s difficult for the government to obtain all the passengers’ information.”
Official media showed workers cutting through the hull of the bottom of the ship, which was overturned in waters 50 feet deep, as rain pattered the waters around them.
The ship had set out from Nanjing on Thursday and was heading upriver toward the inland metropolis of Chongqing, plying a route popular with tourists that runs through scenic canyons known as the Three Gorges. Onboard were 405 passengers, five travel-agency staff and 46 crew members, state media reported, citing Yangtze River navigation administrative authorities.
Many of the passengers were from the eastern province of Jiangsu and the adjacent city of Shanghai, and a large contingent were elderly people on package tours—some in their 80s—organized by a Shanghai travel agency.
