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Chinese Cruise Ship Disaster Blamed on Weather
Chinese Cruise Ship Decision
Remember when the Chinese cruise ship sank on the Yangtze River back in June? Well the final decision has been made as to who is at fault and Chinese authorities blamed freak weather and failures in the crew’s judgment.
Authorities are also recommending that the captain be further investigated and representatives of the shipping company and local authorities be punished for management flaws.
The disaster on the Yangtze River on June 1 killed 442 people and left just 12 survivors. The Eastern Star was carrying many elderly tourists on a 10-day cruise from Nanjing in China’s east upstream to Chongqing.
The Cabinet’s investigation team concluded the Eastern Star was brought down “by strong winds and heavy rains” associated with a downburst, a strong downdraft that is “a very rare weather phenomenon.”
The conclusion backs up the initial finding that the disaster was caused by strong winds, although passengers’ relatives have raised questions about whether the ship should have continued its voyage despite a weather warning.
The Chinese Cruise Ship Disaster
The sinking on China’s mightiest river came in the middle of a year of large-scale and mostly man-made disasters that killed more than 700 people, raising questions about warning systems, safety and preparedness in the world’s second largest economy.
Limited weather radar coverage along the Yangtze contributed to the disaster because forecasters were unable to gauge the threat level and warn the captain in time, meteorologist and investigation team member Xu Xiangde was quoted as saying in state newspapers on Thursday.
The investigation team found that 36 local government and Communist Party officials and seven people from the shipping company should be given administrative punishments for flaws in management, which would likely include demotions and firings.
The seven included the captain and the officer in charge at the time, who died in the disaster. The investigation found the pair responded inadequately to the emergency and had not properly ascertained the threat posed by the dire weather conditions.
It recommended that the ship’s captain, Zhang Shunwen, have his license revoked and his contract terminated, and that his case be sent for further investigation to determine whether he should face criminal charges.
The captain was arrested after he was rescued from the river, with investigators looking into why he chose to sail into the storm instead of dropping anchor. Investigators had also been expected to focus on alterations made to the ship. A government agency had earlier cited the ship for safety violations.
Qin Meiping, who lost her 73-year-old father and 49-year-old brother, questioned whether the modifications to the vessel had been safe.
“If you blame it on the weather, why were the other two boats that were also traveling at that time safe? Why was this boat modified three times before? Were the modifications done properly?” asked Qin, who said she has had “tears in my eyes every day since” the sinking. “We are not experts, but is the report by the experts the truth?”
She pointed to other deadly disasters in China in the past year, including a stampede in Shanghai on New Year’s Eve 2014, explosions at a chemical warehouse in Tianjin and the toppling of a mountain of construction waste that buried a large area in Shenzhen.
“It will happen again if people do not face the truth and don’t admit there are management problems,” she said.
