Chinese ship flipped in search for missing
JIANLI, China — Topdeck cabins poked out of the water from a capsized river cruise ship on the Yangtze River today after disaster teams righted the vessel to quicken the search for more than 340 people still missing.
Divers found more bodies as they worked overnight to attach iron chains to the vessel, raising the total number of bodies found to 97, Transport Ministry spokesman Xu Chengguang said. Just 14 of the 456 people aboard are known to have survived the late Monday disaster.
State broadcaster CCTV announced this morning that the boat had been righted, and that teams would try to lift the vessel even though the water inside it was weighing it down.
Xu said earlier that the operation would involve divers putting steel bars underneath the ship, which would then be lifted by two 500- ton cranes. A huge net was placed near the cranes and another one a few yards downstream to catch any bodies.
Two smaller cranes were also on site, and boats were stopped from entering the area.
Earlier, hundreds of relatives of the passengers gathered in a public square in the town of Jianli, about a 90- minute drive from the site of the disaster, clutching candles and flowers.
“We just want an early resolution to this tragedy,” one woman told Reuters news agency as she sobbed. “We feel so devastated.”
About 200 divers had been working around- the- clock to search for survivors, but muddy water, a strong current and debris piled up inside the boat hindered their efforts.
Other rescue workers had cut into the hull Wednesday to find anyone who might have been sheltering in air pockets. But more than 24 hours since the last survivors were pulled out alive, China’s Transport Ministry said crews would begin turning the boat this morning.
Despite an extensive search and the deployment of sensitive scanning devices, “no sign of life was found,” Xu said at a news conference.
“Turning the boat will make it easier to bring the bodies out,” said Gong Yongjun, a professor specializing in rescue and salvage at the Transportation Equipment and Ocean Engineering College in the northeastern city of Dalian.
China has promised that there will be no “cover- up” in the investigation into why the Eastern Star, which also has been referred to as the Oriental Star, capsized suddenly in stormy weather Monday while on an 11- day cruise up Asia’s longest river.
But anger has been rising among relatives of those on board, largely at a lack of information and access to the site.
“At the moment we know absolutely nothing,” Alex Chu, the son- in- law of a passenger, told CNN. “We want to go to the site, but we can’t. We want to see the latest developments, but they tell us it looks the same on TV.”
Some relatives have questioned why the boat carried on upriver during the storm when at least three other boats dropped anchor. Others asked why the captain and several crew members apparently had time to put on life jackets but had not been able to send a distress call.
It’s also unclear whether the Eastern Star was sufficiently stable to withstand adverse weather conditions.
It is unusual for a ship to capsize so quickly, and investigators will examine “why the ship’s stability failed so catastrophically,” said Lawrence Brennan, a maritime law expert at Fordham Law School in New York.
Investigators could study factors such as proper crew training and whether it had received a warning about impending bad weather, he said.
On Thursday morning, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior Communist Party leaders called on rescuers to “take all possible measures” to find survivors.
The Politburo Standing Committee also “noted the importance of caring for passengers’ families” and promised “timely, accurate and transparent” information from the investigation, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
However, restrictions have been placed on domestic and foreign reporting at the scene.