On China's Yangtze River, a Race Against Time to Find Survivors

JIANLI, China: Rescue divers from across China converged on a remote stretch of the Yangtze River on Tuesday in a race to save people believed to be trapped inside the hull of a capsized cruise ship that had carried 456 passengers and crew members.

As of Tuesday evening, nearly a full day after the four-story ship, the Oriental Star, capsized amid high winds and heavy rain, only 14 people were known to have survived the accident, including a 65-year-old woman, Zhu Hongmei, who was dramatically pulled from an air pocket inside the ship just after midday Tuesday by divers. They briefly instructed her on how to use scuba equipment before guiding her into the muddy water and free of the overturned vessel, according to Chen Shoumin, the commander of the local military district, who spoke at a televised briefing.

Late Tuesday, the official Xinhua News Agency lowered the number of people onboard to 456 from 458, and said there were 14 survivors, down from an earlier report of 15. The agency did not explain why the numbers had changed. As of late Tuesday, 437 were still missing, according to state news media.

Five bodies have been recovered, Xinhua reported, and many hundreds are probably still inside the vessel. Chen said that more people might still be alive in the ship and that additional rescuers were on their way to the scene of the accident, in Jianli County in Hubei province in central China, with plans calling for 183 divers to be there by Wednesday.

Other rescue workers were seen on state television tapping hammers on the hull, then listening for any response that could indicate survivors.

It appeared that the death toll could exceed that of East Asia's previous such major disaster, the sinking of the South Korean ferry Sewol in April 2014, in which 304 people were killed, most of them high school students. Many of the passengers who boarded the Oriental Star in Nanjing on Thursday for a trip to last 10 days or more were older people on group tours, although there were also children among the passengers, including a 3-year-old.

In an indication of how seriously the ruling Communist Party regarded the accident, Premier Li Keqiang arrived at the scene Tuesday, Xinhua reported. Xinhua and other state media outlets showed pictures of him giving instructions to the rescue crews. News organizations reported that Xi Jinping, the country's president and the party's leader, had "issued important instructions immediately" to direct rescue operations.

"This shows that the party and the government, they genuinely care about the people," Chen said.

But some anxious relatives of the passengers disputed that, saying they had been kept in the dark.

The offices of the Xiehe Tourism Agency in Shanghai, where many of the tourists had booked their trips, were closed Tuesday with a note taped to the door saying the managers had gone to the site of the accident.

Grieving family members who had shown up at the office were sent by officials to a local petition bureau and told to wait there. Many of them were angry that the government had not provided them with any information about the accident or a list of possible victims.

"They don't want to tell us anything, and they treat us like we're going to do something bad," said a woman with the surname Chen, who said three of her sisters and two brothers-in-law were believed to have been on the Oriental Star with 14 other members of a tour group. "We just want to know where they are. Our family lost five people."

Chen's husband, who said his surname was Cai, stepped in, saying: "No one has talked to us; we've gotten no update. It's really disappointing."

When a man who appeared to be a higher-ranking official arrived at the bureau, some relatives shouted at him and followed him, demanding answers. Others jostled with staff members at the bureau after they were told not to talk with the news media.

The captain of the Oriental Star, who has not been identified, was recovered from the river at about 11:50 p.m. Monday, more than two hours after the vessel capsized, the official Hubei Daily reported.

Images released Tuesday by the Chinese state media showed boats swarming around the capsized vessel and rescue workers on the keel, which lay above the waterline in muddy water about 50 feet deep, perpendicular to the riverbank. Xinhua reported that rescuers had cut into the ship in an attempt to reach possible survivors. As night fell, the scene was illuminated by powerful lights.

Alan Loynd, a longtime salvage expert based in Hong Kong, said that cutting a hole into the hull would require making sure the ship was in shallow water, to ensure that it did not sink deeper.

"The danger, of course, is if she's floating upside down, you let the air out and she sinks," he said. "You'd probably want to tow her into the shallows."

When possible, air is pumped into an overturned vessel from below as the exposed hull is cut open, in an attempt to maintain air pockets in the hull and reduce the risk that the vessel will descend deeper.

"One problem with pumping air from underneath is affecting the vessel's stability - it may roll further," said Arthur Bowring, the managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association.

In the main Jianli hospital, several police officers blocked journalists on Tuesday evening from going to the rooms in which survivors were resting. One officer said survivors had been brought in with multiple fractures. He added that the hospital would send a psychologist to talk to the survivors.

The central government ordered all Chinese journalists, except for those from Xinhua and China Central Television, to refrain from going to the scene, some Chinese journalists said. The government often issues such orders when unexpected and politically delicate news events take place.

The sinking is the most prominent transportation accident in China since a high-speed train crash near the eastern city of Wenzhou in 2011, in which 40 people died.

Both the captain and the chief engineer of the Oriental Star, who also survived, were taken into police custody and said during questioning that the ship capsized when it was hit by a tornado, according to reports in the state-run media.

Tornadoes are not as common in China as in the United States, but the China Meteorological Administration said Tuesday that a tornado had been reported in the area around the time that the ship capsized. Wind speeds reached 12 on the Beaufort Scale, which translates to 74 mph, or hurricane strength, for 15 to 20 minutes, the administration said in an email. Between 9 and 10 p.m. Monday, about 2 1/2 inches of rain fell in the area, it said.

Yang Min, who was waiting in Shanghai on Tuesday for news about his 60-year-old parents and his 7-year-old daughter, all of whom had been on the ship, said he had called them about 9 p.m. Monday, just minutes before the vessel was reported to have sunk.

"They said it was raining, but they didn't say the weather was too bad," Yang said by telephone.

But Zhang Hui, a 43-year-old tour company employee who survived the disaster, told Xinhua that the ship encountered strong winds and lightning shortly after 9 p.m.

"Raindrops hit the right side of the ship, and many cabins had water come in," he said. "Even with the windows closed the water seeped in."

Twenty minutes later, as passengers were busy dragging wet bedding and electrical devices from their berths, the ship tilted violently.

"We've got a big problem," he said he told a colleague. Zhang said he grabbed a life vest that kept him afloat as wave after wave crashed over him. "I told myself, 'Just keep going.'"

Satellite data on a Chinese website under the Ministry of Transportation shows that the Oriental Star made a sharp change in direction during its final minutes afloat, going downstream rather than upstream for more than five minutes. It traveled about 1,300 feet, or more than five times the length of the ship, before the last fix on the ship's position was recorded by the website.

The data only plotted the ship's position. It was not clear whether the ship actually turned around on its own power or drifted downstream with the current before losing contact with the satellite.

The Oriental Star was sailing between two of China's largest cities, from Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, on the east coast, to Chongqing, an interior metropolis. That journey takes several days.

The ship was built in February 1994 and was capable of carrying 534 people, Xinhua reported. It belongs to the Chongqing Oriental Ferry Co., which is state-owned and deeply in debt. Last year the company reported assets of about $14.5 million and liabilities of more than twice that amount, or $29.8 million, according to records filed with the government.

An employee of the company, who gave his surname as Deng, said Tuesday that much of its senior management was heading to the scene of the capsizing. Deng said there were no plans for the company, which has about half a dozen ships, to halt tours on its other vessels.

"We'll be very careful carrying out safety measures, that's for sure," he said by telephone.

Tuesday night, police officers had set up a checkpoint on the main road leading into the town of Jianli, the county seat. Many local residents stood holding umbrellas while various rescue and civilian vehicles remained parked in the vicinity or waited in line at the checkpoint.

Qin Jianli, 48, from the nearby village of Xinzhou, drove on a scooter with his young son from the direction of the rescue site.

"It's been busy all day today," he said. "Last night around 9:30, the wind began blowing hard, with lots of lightning. It blew so hard it destroyed some homes in my village."

"The wind swirled in a twisted shape," he added.