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An investigation team sent by the State Council arrived Wednesday evening to direct the rescue work at the boat capsize site, where one victim was drowned and 43 others missing Tuesday night in the Xiaolangdi Reservoir in central China's Henan Province.
Led by Wang Dexue, deputy director of the State Administration of Production Safety, the team, which reached the reservoir around 19:20 p.m. in the day, is assigned to pinpoint the cause of the tragedy.
Wang said the accident has aroused close attention of the State Council, which prompted local government to go all out to rescue those victimized and required that during the rescue operation due attention be given to the safety of rescuers.
By press time, several hundreds of soldiers are searching for those missing in the reservoir, located at the lower reaches of the Yellow River in Jiyuan city of the province, but they have not found any clue of the missing.
The accident occurred at around 8:00 p.m. Tuesday when the boat Mingzhu No. 2 suddenly capsized and sank during a rainstorm in the reservoir in Jiyuan city, and 69 sightseers, including a boatman, three guides and 65 tourists, on board fell into the water.
Twenty-six people were rescued from the boat and 43 are still missing. One survivor died on the way to hospital.
Twenty-three of the survivors are still in hospital for medical observation and treatment. Most of them reported scratches and bruises and are now emotionally stable after the initial shock, according to hospital sources.
A third-round silt-washing operation is currently going on in the Yellow River and a huge amount of water is deluged from the reservoir and churning the sediment in the lower reaches of the river.
The tourists were all staff members of the Xinghua Fine Chemical Plant in Kaifeng city, whose management had organized a site survey at the operation site for 129 people on Tuesday.
The provincial tourism administration has issued an emergency notice overnight to ban visits to the reservoir during the silt-washing operation.
(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2004)
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