JIANLI, China — Chinese authorities deployed scores more divers and a large crane as they escalated efforts Wednesday to recover more than 410 people believed to be trapped inside an overturned river cruise ship.
The capsizing late Monday of the multi-decked Eastern Star in the Yangtze River is on track to become the country’s deadliest maritime disaster in seven decades. Chinese authorities have launched a high-profile response while tightly controlling media coverage.
Premier Li Keqiang, the country’s No. 2 political leader, has traveled to the disaster site in the Hubei province county of Jianli where he urged “all-out,” 24-7 efforts.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said the bodies of 26 victims have been pulled from the boat, which floated with a sliver of its hull jutting from the grey river. Fourteen people survived, some of them by swimming ashore and three by being pulled out of the ship by rescuers Tuesday.
But the vast majority of the 456 people on board remain missing. Many were elderly tourists taking in the scenic vistas of the Yangtze on a cruise from Nanjing to the southwestern city of Chongqing.
Records from a maritime agency show the capsized ship was cited for safety violations two years ago. Authorities in Nanjing held the ship and five other Yangtze cruise vessels after it found them in violation of standards during a safety inspection campaign in 2013, according to a report on the city’s Maritime Safety website. It didn’t specify the Eastern Star’s violations.
The shallow-draft boat, which was not designed to withstand the kind of heavy winds an ocean-going vessel can, overturned in what Chinese weather authorities have called a cyclone with winds up to 80 mph.
“The river ships tend to have a lower standard on wind-resistance and wave-resistance than ocean ships,” Zhong Shoudao, president of the Chongqing Boat Design Institute, said at a news conference along with weather and Transportation Ministry officials. “Under the special circumstance of a cyclone, the pressure on the one side of the boat went beyond the standard it was designed for, resulting in the overturning of the boat.
“The boat had lifejackets and lifeboats. But due to the sudden capsizing, there was not enough time for people to put on lifejackets or for the signals to be sent out,” Zhong said.
The squad of 13 navy divers who searched the boat Tuesday — and pulled out three trapped survivors from air pockets after voices were heard through the hull — was expanded Wednesday to 202, including 45 from civilian rescue services. They were working in shifts virtually around the clock as part of a last-ditch attempt to find survivors, the most recent of whom was found Tuesday.
