Over 400 still missing from capsized cruise ship in China

JIANLI, China (AP) — As the
Eastern Star cruise ship listed heavily amid pounding rain on the
Yangtze River, tour guide Zhang Hui told a colleague, “Looks like we are
in trouble.”

The vessel capsized in the storm Monday night with
458 people aboard, touching off a frantic rescue effort. At least 15
people were brought to safety, including three pulled from the
overturned hull Tuesday, and five people were confirmed dead, the
official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The vessel was carrying mostly elderly tourists from Nanjing to the southwestern city of Chongqing when it overturned in China’s Hubei Province.

Divers
rescued a 65-year-old woman and, later, two men who had been trapped,
state broadcaster CCTV reported. It said more people had been found and
were being rescued, but did not say whether they were still inside the
overturned hull.

CCTV video showed rescuers in orange life vests
climbing on the hull, with one of them lying down tapping a hammer and
listening for a response, then gesturing downward.

“We will do
everything we can to rescue everyone trapped in there, no matter they’re
still alive or not, and we will treat them as our own families,” Hubei
military region commander Chen Shoumin said at a news conference shown
live on CCTV.

The survivors included the ship’s captain and chief
engineer, both of whom were taken into police custody, CCTV said.
Relatives who gathered in Shanghai, where many of the tourists started
their journey by bus, questioned whether the captain did enough to
ensure the passengers’ safety and demanded answers from local officials
in unruly scenes that drew a heavy police response.

Xinhua quoted
the captain and the chief engineer as saying the four-level Eastern Star
sank quickly after being caught in what they described as a cyclone.
The Communist Party-run People’s Daily said the ship sank within two
minutes.

Zhang, the tour guide, said in an interview with Xinhua
from his hospital bed that he grabbed a life jacket with seconds to
spare as the ship listed in the storm, sending bottles rolling off
tables and suddenly turned all the way over.

The 43-year-old Zhang
said he drifted in the Yangtze all night despite not being able to
swim, reaching shore as dawn approached.

“The raindrops hitting my face felt like hailstones,” he said. “‘Just hang in there a little longer,’ I told myself,” he added.

Some
survivors swam ashore, but others were rescued after search teams
climbed on the upside-down hull and heard people yelling for help from
within more than 12 hours after the ship overturned.

Thirteen navy divers were on the scene and 170 more were joining them, Chen said.

The
65-year-old woman was rescued by divers who took an extra breathing
apparatus up into the bowels of the ship and spent about five minutes
teaching her how to use it before bringing her out to safety, Chen said.

“That
old woman had a very strong will and learned very fast, and after 20
minutes she surfaced to the water and was rescued,” he added.

Chinese
Premier Li Keqiang traveled to the accident site about 180 kilometers
(110 miles) west of the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan.

At a
late-night meeting, Li demanded an “overnight battle,” urging divers to
keep combing ship compartments for more miracles, Xinhua reported.

The
overturned ship had drifted about 3 kilometers (almost 2 miles)
downstream before coming to rest close to shore, where fast currents
made the rescue difficult.

The fact that the capsized ship drifted
downstream was a good sign for rescuers because it meant there was
enough air inside to give it buoyancy, and could mean there were enough
air pockets for survivors, said Chi-Mo Park, a professor of naval
architecture and ocean engineering at South Korea’s Ulsan University.

“It all depends how much space there is inside the vessel,” Park said.

CCTV
said the vessel had been carrying 406 Chinese passengers, five travel
agency employees and a crew of 47. The broadcaster said most of the
passengers were 50 to 80 years old.

Many of the passengers took a
bus from Shanghai to Nanjing for the departure to Chongqing. Their
relatives gathered in Shanghai at a travel agency that had booked many
of the trips, and later went to a government office to demand more
information about the accident before police broke up the gatherings.

Huang
Yan, 49, an accountant in Shanghai, wept as she told a reporter that
she believes that her husband, 49, and his father, who is in his 70s,
were aboard. But she said she couldn’t be sure because she hadn’t seen a
passenger manifest yet.

“Why did the captain leave the ship while
the passengers were still missing?” Huang shouted. “We want the
government to release the name list to see who was on the boat.”

A
group of about a dozen retirees from a Shanghai bus company were on the
trip, said a woman who identified herself only by her surname, Chen.
Among them, she said, were her older sister and brother-in-law, both 60,
and their 6-year-old granddaughter.

“This group has traveled
together a lot, but only on short trips. This is the first time they
traveled for a long trip,” Chen said.

The ship sank in the
Damazhou waterway section, where the river is 15 meters (50 feet) deep.
The Yangtze is the world’s third-longest river and sometimes floods
during the summer monsoon season.

More than 50 boats and 3,000 people were involved in the search.

The
Eastern Star was 251 feet (76.5 meters) long and 36 feet (11 meters)
wide, and could carry a maximum of 534 people, CCTV reported. It is
owned by the Chongqing Eastern Shipping Corp., which focuses on tourism
routes in the popular Three Gorges river canyon region. The company
could not be reached for comment.

CCTV reported that 6 inches (150
millimeters) of rain had fallen in the region in the past 24 hours.
Local media reported winds reached 80 mph (130 kph) during the accident.
___

Associated
Press writers Jack Chang and Ian Mader and news assistant Yu Bing in
Beijing, news assistant Fu Ting in Shanghai, and writer Tong-hyung Kim
in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

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