Hopes dim amid race to find survivors from ship
400-plus trapped for over 36 hours in capsized hull
JIANLI, China — Hopes dimmed Wednesday for rescuing more than 400 people still trapped aboard a capsized river cruise ship that overturned in stormy weather about 36 hours earlier, as hundreds of rescuers searched the Yangtze River site in what could become the deadliest Chinese maritime accident in decades.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that 13 bodies had been pulled from the boat, which was floating with a sliver of its hull jutting from the gray river water.
A total of 14 people have been rescued, but the vast majority of the 456 people on board, many of them elderly tourists, were unaccounted for.
The Eastern Star was traveling upstream Monday night from the eastern city of Nanjing to the southwestern city of Chongqing when it overturned in China’s Hubei province in what state media reported as a cyclone with winds of up to 80 mph.
Huang Delong, a deckhand on a car ferry crossing the Yangtze several miles upstream of the site, said he was working Monday evening when the weather turned nasty.
“From about 9 p.m. it began raining extremely hard, then the cyclone hit and the wind was really terrifying,” Huang said.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the sinking could become the country’s worst shipping accident in seven decades.
“We will do everything we can to rescue everyone trapped in there, no matter (whether) 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. The Communist Party-run People’s Daily said the ship sank within two minutes.
Tour guide Zhang Hui 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.
Zhang, 43, 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.’ ”
The Eastern Star is owned by Chongqing Eastern Shipping, which focuses on tourism routes in the popular Three Gorges river canyon region. The company could not be reached for comment Wednesday.