By now, hope is all but gone. It’s Friday and there are no signs of life. Fourteen people have survived the disaster, a number that has barely changed since Tuesday, the day after the Eastern Star capsized during a storm on a section of the Yangtze River that flows through Hubei province.
On Friday, the body count rose to 97. It’s a fraction of the 456 passengers who were on board, many of them in their 60s and 70s. But divers and life detectors had run out of luck the night before. So the next phase, the salvage, is free to begin.
Floating cranes moved alongside the overturned river cruise ship, dropped cables and hooks into the water and rolled it upright. Rescuers will search cabin by cabin for people who may have, by chance, survived in a cranny inside, and for the many who most certainly didn’t.
Crews planned to drain the Eastern Star, so it could float on its own by evening, then they’d lift it out of the water, said Xu Chengguang, a Chinese Transport Ministry spokesman. They were also preparing to deal with potential oil leaks from the ship.
About 150 ships waited in the search and rescue area near the crumpled wreck.
One man’s heavy grief
Jian was desperate to know what happened to his mother, father, aunt and uncle, who were sailing on the multiday cruise from Nanjing to Chongqing.
So the man, who asked that his last name not be published, joined dozens of others missing their loved ones in Jianli County to wait for answers. The nation is sharing their grief; for China, the accident is a national tragedy.
But Jian has not been willing to just sit and wait. He found the ship on a map and hired a motorcycle driver to take him to the riverside to get as close to the vessel as possible.
He arrived at a muddy path along the Yangtze.
“When I was slogging through the ankle-high muddy path along the Yangtze River, all of a sudden I remembered a similar path where my dad took me to fish when I was a kid,” he said. “I immediately took my cell phone out, dialed my dad’s number again and again, but there was no answer.”
“I couldn’t see the ship. But I was so close to him. I just wanted to be closer.”
Jian says he accepts the fact that his loved ones have died.
“It was almost a sure thing that nobody was alive,” he said after seeing the waters.
Anger at government
Some family members have been angry with the government for not doing enough to save their loved ones from the river.
And Jian is among those who haven’t been satisfied with the response, but he remains calm.
On Thursday, he joined other family members and locals who gathered in Jianli’s town square for a somber candlelight vigil in honor of the hundreds of people presumed dead.
Family members say they have been giving blood samples to provide the DNA necessary for identifying the bodies pulled from the wreckage.
Support
In the town of Jianli, not far from the stretch of river where the Eastern Star capsized, crowds of children chattered with excitement Friday morning as they tied hundreds of fluttering yellow ribbons to a fence outside their school.
The ribbons are part of a campaign of support for victims of the cruise ship accident.
Nine-year-old Yi Duo Duo wrote on his ribbon, “I wish you come back safe,” before tying it to the fence.
Other residents have put up signs of sympathy outside their homes and businesses.
Questions about cause of disaster
Questions remain about what happened to the Eastern Star on Monday night.
Authorities have taken the captain and the chief engineer into custody but have revealed little about what they have said, other than that a tornado hit the ship.
It’s unclear why the Eastern Star was the only ship on the busy waterway so badly affected by the storm.
Satellite information from a website run by the Transport Ministry shows the cruise ship suddenly changing direction a matter of minutes before authorities say it sank.
But what caused the ship to start moving downstream rather than upstream isn’t clear. One possibility is that the change in direction came after the ship was left disabled and drifting by the storm.
Top government officials have demanded an investigation into the cause of the disaster.