Keeping an eye on Communist, Totalitarian China, and its influence both globally, and we as Canadians. I have come to the opinion that we are rarely privy to truth regarding the real goal, the agenda of Red China, and it's implications for Canada [and North America as a whole]. No more can we rely on our media as more and more information on China is actively being swept under the carpet - not for consumption.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Cyclone hits Chinese cruise on Yangtze river: 400 missing – live updates
Cyclone hits Chinese cruise on Yangtze river:400 missing – live updates
Tuesday 2 June 2015
15 people bought to safety including 3 trapped in hull
Captain and chief engineer detained by police
Survivor: ship tilted after heavy rain seeped into cabins
More than 24 hours after the ship went down we are going to bring
this blog to a close. There have been no reports of survivors for
several hours, and more than 400 people on board remain missing.
The captain’s claim that the Eastern Star was hit by a cyclone has been backed up by China’s Met Office. China’s Meteorological Administration said a force 12 cyclone struck the area when the ship went down.
Police intervene as angry relatives demand information
Police were called after angry relatives demanding information
stormed the offices of the Shanghai Xiehe Tourism Agency, the company
which organised the ill-fated cruised, AP reports.
Huang Jing rushed to the office of the Shanghai Xiehe Tourism Agency
as soon as he heard Tuesday morning about the sinking of a riverboat
cruise with his brother- and father-in-law and another 456 people on
board. He demanded an official passenger list from the travel company that
had arranged the cruise along China’s famed Yangtze River. When the
agency didn’t respond, he and other relatives turned on the local
government, storming city district offices and cornering officials to
ask that they force the cruise company to help them. Police were called
in to keep the peace. “The government must meet its responsibility,” Huang said by mobile
phone from a government office where he and other relatives were being
kept away from the media. “We need to learn what happened to our loved
ones.” Tuesday’s discontent began when grieving relatives showed up to the
travel agency’s office only to find a notice on the door saying the
owner could not be reached. They moved onto Shanghai’s Zhabei district
where they tearfully demanded help from officials there. Although an apparent boat passenger list had been circulating on
social media, Huang said it only included the names and government ID
numbers of passengers who had purchased travel insurance. He said his
relatives and others weren’t on that list. “The government should bring us to Hubei now,” said one relative,
who only identified herself by her family name Li. “How can these people
(at the travel agency) run away?” Dozens of police arrived when relatives confronted city officials
while shouting, “Are we asking too much? No, we just want information!” Chinese officials have tried to defuse such suspicions by blending
coverage of such disasters with positive stories of government officials
jumping into action. On Tuesday, state broadcaster CCTV paired updates on the boat sinking with footage of Premier Li Keqiang
appearing to direct the rescue effort from the river site as well as
with quotes from President Xi Jinping calling for an all-out rescue
effort. The relatives didn’t appear on state media reports about the
disaster, which instead described the rescue in extensive detail. Huang said he still didn’t know whether his relatives were alive or
dead.“Nobody has told us anything,” he said. “This is something we can’t
accept.”
Relatives of Shanghai passengers on board a cruise ship that capsized in
central China, attempt to storm a government office to demand
information after the tourist agency which organised the tour failed to
help them. Photograph: AP
The ship was not overloaded and there were enough life jackets for
all the passengers, according to this video account by state-funded New China.
It said all those who were rescued were wearing life jackets - a
claim contradicted by footage and photographs of a 65-year-old woman
being pulled to safety without any safety jacket. A survivor said the ship went down so quickly that passengers didn’t have a chance to grab life jackets. New China said that bad weather is hampering rescue efforts and that those leading the operation want to turn the ship upright.
Foreign journalists are being stopped from reaching a small port near the scene from where rescue operation is being conducted, Tom Phillips reports from the scene.
We were turned away by members of China’s people’s armed police. We
also saw them stopping Chinese rescue workers bringing search lights to
area to help with night operations.
A police officer directs traffic on a road leading to the rescue site of
the overturned passenger ship in the Jianli section of the Yangtze
River. Photograph: Xinhua/REX Shutterstock/Xinhua/REX Shutterstock
Tom’s account confirms earlier reports.
The ship began to list after heavy rain seeped into the cabins, according to the most detailed eyewitness account to date of what happened. Zhang Hui, the tour guide who survived the disaster told Xinhua that
he noticed the ship tilting 20 minutes after heavy rain began soaking
cabins.
Outside of his office onboard the ship, rain began to pour and lightening 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 tilt. The ship shifted as much as 45 degrees, according to Zhang. Small
bottles began to roll down the table. Zhang replaced them up, but they
tipped and rolled again. “Looks like we are in trouble,” Zhang recalls telling his colleague. Then the cruise overturned. Zhang and his colleague only had 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 wear it. He remembered seeing around a dozen people in the water yelling for help.
He added that the ship then sank very rapidly. He said:
“Life jackets are accessible in all of the cruise’s cabins. If it had
not happened so fast, a lot of people could’ve been saved.”
Chinese rescuers stand on the upturned bottom of the capsized cruise
ship in the Yangtze River in Jianli county, Photograph: Imaginechina/REX
Shutterstock/Imaginechina/REX Shutterstock
AP has revised down the number of survivors. It had said 18 had survived, it nows says 15 have been brought to
safety while we wait for news of three or four others believed to be
trapped in the hull.
Some of the survivors swam ashore, but others were rescued more than
12 hours after the ship went down, after search teams climbed aboard
the upside-down hull and heard people calling out from within. 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. Other survivors include the ship’s captain and the chief engineer.
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