Festival plans end in tragedy as 17 killed in dragon boat accident

Preparations for China’s traditional Dragon Boat Festival races took a tragic turn at the weekend.

Seventeen people were killed after two dragon boats capsized in southern China on Saturday, authorities have said.

The boats were practising for a race in the Taohua River, as part of the nationwide dragon boat racing, in the city of Guilin when the accident happened, said the fire department of the city, which is capital of Guangxi region.

The government has not issued a full explanation of why the two boats, each about 60 feet long, capsized.

An officer who led the rescue, Wang Junshi, said video indicated that one boat flipped first and then the other after its rowers tried to catch up to save people thrown out of the first boat, the Legal Evening News, a Chinese newspaper, said on its website.

The rowers were not wearing life jackets, and one unnamed rescuer said that when drowned bodies were pulled out “you could see that when they fell into the water they were trying to clutch at something,” the newspaper reported.

The fire department said on its official account on the social media site Sina Weibo that search efforts ended late on Saturday and 17 people had been confirmed dead.

A total of 60 people fell into the water.

The official Xinhua News Agency said eight boats and over 200 people had been deployed to the rescue.

Two organisers of the practise, from the village of Dunmu, were detained, Xinhua said.

Chinese news websites showed pictures reportedly of the accident and its aftermath, including dozens of people bobbing in the brownish water and trying to scramble to shore, as well as rescuers in dinghies trying to fish out victims from the edge of the spillway.

China has sought to step up safety surrounding nationwide dragon boat racing during the Duanwu festival, which falls near the summer solstice and commemorates the death of the poet and minister Qu Yuan in the third century BC.

The Duanwu Festival, which will be held in June, features long boats powered by dozens of rowers racing along rivers and reservoirs.

Dragon boat races are a popular tradition across much of southern China, but the villagers in Guilin, the area of Guangxi where the accident occurred, are especially avid competitors.