China ship righted to speed up search
JIANLI—Top-deck cabins with smashed blue roofs from the Eastern Star river cruiser jutted out of gray water on Friday after disaster teams righted the capsized vessel to ease the search for more than 340 people still missing. So far, 97 bodies have been found.
Crews worked on draining water from the ship, which was still mostly submerged in the Yangtze River, as the focus shifted from finding survivors to retrieving bodies trapped after Monday night’s sudden capsizing during a storm while on a trip from Nanjing to Chongqing.
Chinese authorities have attributed the accident to sudden high winds just before 9:30 p.m., but also have placed the surviving captain and first engineer under police custody. Passengers’ relatives have raised questions about whether the boat should have continued on after the storm started despite a weather warning earlier in the evening.
In all 14 people survived the accident in Hubei province near Jianli county, including three pulled by divers from air pockets in the overturned boat on Tuesday after rescuers tapped the hull and heard responding yells from inside.
The boat was righted on Friday morning with cranes after some 50 divers worked overnight to attach chains to it, transportation ministry spokesperson Xu Chengguang said, adding that disaster teams would now focus on draining off water, and finding and identifying bodies. Divers also found more bodies overnight, bringing the death toll to 97, Xu said.
In a sign of potential unrest among the hundreds of relatives who have descended on the small community of Jianli, one distraught family member burst into a gathering of journalists to complain about the treatment and demand an investigation into possible human error.
“All the emphasis is on a natural disaster... but we think that this is unjust,” said Xia Yunchen, a 70-year-old university lecturer. “...were there other causes?”
Xia, whose older brother Xia Qinchen, from the eastern coastal city of Qingdao, was a passenger, demanded that relatives be allowed to view their loved ones’ bodies before they are cremated. In past disasters, authorities have cremated bodies and delivered ashes to the victims’ families without letting them see them, in keeping with the tight management of the aftermath of natural disasters and fears of spiraling unrest.