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June 3, 2015

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Tour guide escapes to safety as customers perish on cruise ship

WHEN Zhang Hui touched a rock near the shore yesterday morning, he thought he was hallucinating.

The 43-year-old man endured an unlikely drift to eventually emerge alive from the ship that capsized in the Yangtze River on Monday night that has left more than 400 missing.

Zhang, who works for a Shanghai-based travel agency, was one of more than 450 people aboard the “Eastern Star” cruise ship, which left Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, on Thursday and was expected to reach Chongqing on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River this weekend.

Many of the people on the cruise went to bed about 9pm on Monday, as Zhang went through a list of activities planned for his group the next day.

Outside of his office, rain began to pour and lightning streaked across the sky.

Gradually, the rain began to pound the right side of the ship, with water seeping inside the cabins.

“The water continued to seep through even when you shut the windows,” Zhang said.

Twenty minutes later, passengers began taking their soaked quilts and TVs into the hall. Zhang was leaving his office on the right side of the boat to return to his bedroom on the left side. That’s when he noticed the ship had began to list.

The ship shifted as much as 45 degrees, and then capsized, he said.

Zhang and a colleague had only 30 seconds to grab a life jacket. They grabbed everything they could reach and kept their heads above water as the cruise sank.

Zhang, who does not know how to swim, drifted in the river, holding the life jacket to stay afloat. He had no time to put it on.

He remembered seeing about a dozen people in the water yelling for help.

Five minutes later, only three to four could be heard. Their voices waned half an hour later, Zhang said.

After that, Zhang was tossed around in big waves and heavy rain.

“The raindrops hitting my face felt like hailstones. I tried to hold my breath but water was forced into my mouth,” he said.

He managed to tie the life jacket to his belt and keep moving, hoping to run into a boat or reach a dock.

He did see a boat coming his way. He shouted, but either because it was too dark or his voice drowned in the rainstorm, the boat left.

After missing his first chance of being saved, Zhang struggled to keep awake in the cold water.

As dawn approached, Zhang saw land. He then felt reeds in the water and dragged himself to the shore.

Zhang stumbled on toward the buildings and was eventually discovered and sent to a hospital.

“I’m alive,” Zhang said later in phone call to his family. On the other end of the line, his wife and 15-year-old son broke down as they thought Zhang had little chance of survival.

Zhang repeatedly expressed “regret” when recounting his arduous journey toward land.

“Life jackets are accessible in all of the ship’s cabins. If it had not happened so fast, a lot of people could’ve been saved,” he said.

Wang Yangsheng, who works at the Yueyang Maritime Rescue Center, said throughout more than a decade working there, he heard of very few cases where a boat does not even have time to send out a distress call before going underwater.

The rescue center received an alarm call from the crew of another boat, who saw two people in the water at 10:10pm.

The center immediately sent a patrol boat and picked them up at 11:50pm.




 

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