Rescuers try to save hundreds trapped in China ship

Rescue workers scrambled Wednesday to pull people from the hull of a Chinese passenger ship on the Yangtze River after it overturned and sank in a storm.

The boat, the Eastern Star, was carrying 458 people when it capsized on Monday evening, state media reported, and 438 remain missing.

Emergency responders pulled six passengers to safety after hearing banging and cries for help from within the capsized boat, according to CCTV, a state broadcaster. The ship is upside down in about 50 feet of water with part of its hull visible.

At least nine others were saved, including the captain and the chief engineer, and Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered "all-out rescue efforts," the official Xinhua news agency said Tuesday.

Seven passengers swam ashore and called police, according to CCTV.

Zhang Hui, one of those rescued, managed to survive 10 hours in the water by clinging on to some river debris, Xinhua reported. "I told myself to hold on," he said.

"Looks like we are in trouble," Zhang recalled telling a colleague. In an interview with Xinhua from his hospital bed, he said rain pounded the ship, seeping into cabins, and that heavy listing sent bottles rolling off tables before the ship suddenly went all the way over.

The 43-year-old Zhang said he grabbed a life jacket with seconds to spare and drifted 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 captain and chief engineer have been taken into police custody, CCTV reported. According to the BBC, they said the boat was caught in a tornado or cyclone. Chinese media quoted the captain as saying the vessel sank within minutes as many aboard slept.

Footage from CCTV 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, two men who had been trapped, CCTV said. It said additional people had been found and were being rescued, but did not say whether they were still inside the overturned hull.

"We will do everything we can to rescue everyone trapped in there, no matter they're still alive or not and we will treat them as our own families," Hubei military region commander Chen Shoumin said during a news conference broadcast live on CCTV.

The 65-year-old woman was rescued by divers who brought an extra breathing apparatus up into the bowels of the ship and spent about five minutes teaching her how to use it before bringing her out to safety, Chen said.

"That old woman had a very strong will and learned very fast, and after 20 minutes she surfaced to the water and was rescued," Chen said.

The overturned ship had drifted about 2 miles downstream before coming to rest close to the shore, where fast currents made the rescue difficult.

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, Chi-Mo Park, a professor of naval architecture and ocean engineering at South Korea's Ulsan University, told The Associated Press.

"It all depends how much space there is inside the vessel," Park added.

On Tuesday afternoon, the China Meteorological Center reported winds of more than 70 mph when the boat capsized. The severe weather lasted 15-20 minutes, according to the state-owned China Daily newspaper.

More than 50 boats and 3,000 people were involved in search efforts, and divers were deployed. Strong winds and heavy rain were hampering rescue workers.

As evening fell, more than 110 rescue vessels had been deployed, said the Ministry of Transport, with 183 divers due to carry out underwater searches with the aid of five Chinese Air Force helicopters, CCTV reported.

Three bodies were recovered 30 miles from the wreck, state media reported. The Yangtze is the third-longest river in the world, stretching almost 4,000 miles from its source in Tibet, and is miles wide at several points. The sunken ship is now about 2 miles from the shore, CCTV reported.

If a large number of passengers are not rescued, the death toll could exceed that of the April 2014 sinking of a South Korean ferry in which 304 people were killed, most of them high school students.

Premier Li Keqiang was present at the scene in Hubei province to direct the rescue work, Xinhua said. Xinhua and other state media outlets showed pictures of him giving instructions to the rescue crews

The Eastern Star was carrying 411 passengers and 47 crew when it went down about 9:30 p.m., Chinese media said. Most of the passengers were seniors, reportedly between about 50 to 80 years old.

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?" Yan shouted. "We want the government to release the name list to see who was on the boat."

The ship was travelling from the eastern city of Nanjing to Chongqing in the southwest. CCTV said the vessel was operated by the state-owned Chongqing Eastern Shipping Corp., which runs tours to the scenic Three Gorges River canyon on the river, the longest in Asia, the BBC reported. The Three Gorges culminates in a huge dam, which, the BBC reported, has been ordered to reduce the water volume flowing through its giant turbines.

As rescue efforts continued, relatives and friends gathered in Nanjing and Shanghai, according to the BBC, which reported that most of the passengers are retirees from Jiangsu province, where the ship's starting point, Nanjing, is located.

Many had booked a package tour with Xiehe Travel. On Tuesday, anxious relatives gathered at the company's shuttered offices in Shanghai.

According to the BBC, a man sobbed near the office door, saying: "Mom and Dad I was wrong, I shouldn't have let you go off on your vacation."

Another relative, who gave his name as Wang Sheng, 35, said he found out about the disaster while at work. "I cried all the way here and here I can't find anyone, the door is locked," he told reporters.

In Nanjing, local officials set up a command center in a hotel for relatives to register their details and wait for news, the BBC said.

And for one family there was good news — brothers Cao Feng and Cao Cen in Nanjing burst into tears when they recognized their 65-year-old mother, Zhu Hongmei, in news video of her rescue. However, the Cao brothers told reporters that their father is still missing.

Another relative, the husband of a 60-year-old woman who had gone on the cruise with 22 of their neighbors, told the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper that she had called him at about 9 p.m. on Monday. "It's quite stormy and rainy here," he quoted her as saying.

The boat reportedly sank at about 9.30 p.m.

Contributing: The Associated Press

The ship rolled over without warning in high winds Monday night on the Yangtze River. It floated downriver for about 2 miles before grounding on shore.

1. Rescuers can't simply cut holes into the upturned hull. Air trapped inside keeps the ship from sinking. Holes would let the air escape and the ship would sink.

2. For safety requirements, most ships have double-bottomed hulls — two hulls, one nestled inside the other.

3. There's about 3 to 4 feet of space between the hulls. In that space is a series of tanks used for storing liquids – fuel, water or sewage. The liquids are used as ballast, to keep the ship upright.

4. Even if the ship were fully grounded or stabilized, rescuers would have to know how to avoid the tanks to cut holes. The inches-thick steel of the hulls require high-heat cutting tools.

5. As more equipment arrives on the scene, rescuers might try pumping in air from the side of the ship, for the people trapped inside and to keep the vessel stabilized.

6. River currents can be difficult for divers to navigate. Sediments reduce visibility.