BEIJING
— Divers on Tuesday pulled two people alive from inside a capsized
cruise ship and prepared to rescue at least four more, Chinese state
broadcaster CCTV said, giving some small hope to an apparently massive
tragedy with well over 400 people still missing on the Yangtze River.
Only
18 people are known to have survived the capsizing of the ship, which
held 458 people, most of them elderly passengers. At least seven swam
ashore, but others were rescued more than 12 hours after the ship went
down, after search teams climbed aboard the upside-down hull and heard
people calling out from within.
Footage
from the broadcaster showed rescuers in orange life vests climbing on
the upside-down hull, with one of them lying down tapping a hammer and
listening for a response, then gesturing downward.
Divers
pulled out a 65-year-old woman and, later, a man who had been trapped,
CCTV said. It said four additional survivors had been found and were
being rescued, but did not say whether they were still inside the
overturned hull.
Other
survivors include the captain and chief engineer. Five people were
confirmed dead in the accident in Hubei province Monday night during a
cruise from Nanjing to the southwestern city of Chongqing, the
broadcaster and the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The
overturned ship had drifted about 3 kilometers (almost 2 miles)
downstream before coming to rest close to the river shore, where choppy
waters made the rescue difficult. The location is about 180 kilometers
(110 miles) west of the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan.
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 are enough air pockets for survivors to
breathe, 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.
Xinhua
quoted the captain and chief engineer as saying the ship sank quickly
after being caught in a cyclone. The Communist Party-run People's Daily
said the ship sank within two minutes. CCTV said the two were under
police custody.
CCTV
said the four-level ship had been carrying 406 Chinese passengers, five
travel agency employees and 47 crew members. The broadcaster said most
of the passengers were 50 to 80 years of age.
Many
of the ship's passengers started out in Shanghai, taking a bus to
Nanjing for the departure to Chongqing. Relatives of passengers gathered
in Shanghai at a travel agency that had booked many of the trips, and
they later headed to a government office to try to get more information
about the accident.
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 the boat. But she said she couldn't be sure because she
hadn't seen an official passenger list 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 elder sister and her elder sister's
husband, both 60, and their granddaughter, 6.
"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 (about 50 feet) deep. The Yangtze is the world's third-longest
river and sometimes floods during the summer monsoon season.
Several
rescue ships were searching the waters, and divers had been deployed.
The broadcaster said rescue personnel were trying to determine whether
they could right the sunken ship.
More than 50 boats and 3,000 people were involved in search efforts.
The
Eastern Star measured 251 feet long (76.5 meters) and 36 feet wide (11
meters) and was capable of carrying 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 over the past 24 hours. Local media reported winds reached 80 mph
(130 kph) during the accident.
Chinese
Premier Li Keqiang is reported to be traveling to the accident site.
Xinhua reported that President Xi Jinping had ordered a work team of the
State Council, the country's Cabinet, to rush to the site to guide the
rescue work.
___
No comments:
Post a Comment