What sank the Yangtze cruise ship?

What caused the Eastern Star cruise ship to capsize in the Yangtze River with the loss of more than 440 lives? Meteorologists confirmed that a ‘sudden, strong and violent’ storm hit the area, and the transport ministry said the Eastern Star was a ‘grade B vessel’ that might be vulnerable to it.

But others are asking how it could be overturned in seconds, without being able to send out a distress signal, when no other vessels in the area seem to have been affected. It is known that the ship was investigated for safety defects in 2013.

Of the 456 people aboard, only 14 have so far been rescued, including one man who spent ten hours in the water, but hopes are fading that any more survivors will be found. The captain and the chief engineer are in police custody.

China’s worst peacetime shipwreck of the twentieth century came in 1948, when the passenger steam ship Kiangya (pictured) sank in the mouth of the Huangpu River 50 miles south of Shanghai with the loss of up to 3,900 lives. It is believed it struck a mine left behind by the Japanese after World War Two.

The worst floods in history

The worst natural disaster ever happened in 1931 when the Yellow River and the Yangtze burst their banks in China, flooding an area nearly as big as England. Up to 3.75 million people lost their lives in the flood itself, then in the famine and disease that swept through the country in its wake. The second deadliest natural disaster ever was another flood of the Yellow River in 1887, which cost up to 2.5 million lives.

In fact, the Yellow River burst its banks an estimated 1,500 times over three millennia, to be given the name ‘China’s Sorrow’.  Another of its floods in 1938 (pictured) cost the lives of up to 800,000 people, but this was a man-made flood, as the Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, ordered dykes to be blown up to slow the advance of the invading Japanese army.

Floods come in many shapes and sizes, and China was also the scene of the world’s deadliest dam burst, with the collapse in 1975 of a number of Gerry-built structures erected as part of Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward, at the cost of up to 230,000 lives.

We usually think of rain causing floods, but the culprit in Peru in 1941 was a heat wave. It caused a huge lump of ice to fall off a mountain into Lake Palcacocha, making it overflow and sending a torrent racing through towns and villages, drowning 7,000 people.

*For the full story, see my new book, Flood: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books) ISBN 978 1 78023 196 9. It also includes chapters on how so many religions have stories of apocalyptic floods, how floods have been portrayed in literature, art and films, how some of the most ambitious structures ever built by humans have been erected to protect against flooding, and how climate change may now be making humanity more vulnerable than ever to the waters.

** Here's a review of the book. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-35616955.html

China - land of disasters

At least 400 people have been killed in an earthquake that has struck the remote area of Yushu in China’s western Qinghai province. The quake measured 6.9, compared with 7.0 in Haiti and 8.8 in Chile in February.

Nearly every building in the town of Jiegu is said to have been destroyed. Many Tibetans live in the area, and the relief effort is being hampered by landslides that have blocked roads.

China’s worst earthquake in recent years was the one that struck Sichuan in 2008 killing 87,000, but it is truly a country of disasters. Probably the deadliest earthquake the world has ever seen killed 830,000 people in Shaanxi province in 1556, while China also suffered the worst floods in history, with the Yellow River killing up to 2.5 million when it burst its banks in 1889, and the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers accounting for perhaps 3 million in 1931.

More than 1,540 miners perished in the world’s worst mining disaster at Honkeiko in 1942, while in the late 1870’s up to 13 million people died in one of the country's regular famines. The great hunger of 1959-61, hugely aggravated by Chairman Mao’s doctrinaire policies, brought a death toll of perhaps 40 million, while an estimated 36 million were killed in the An Lushan rebellion of the 8th century. For more details on all these stories, see A Disastrous History of the World.

(See also my blogs of Jan 10, Feb 22, March 27, May 11, July 28, Nov 19 and 23, 2009, Jan 15 and 22, Feb 9 and 15, 2010.)

Lingering disasters

Disasters do not always claim all their victims at once. It has been revealed that perhaps 800 people have died, and up to 10,000 have become ill, as a result of poisons they were exposed to in the aftermath of 9/11. There is now an argument in the USA over who should pay for their medical care. Just under 3,000 died in the attack.

Sometimes the aftermath is far deadlier than the original event. In the world’s worst ever dam burst (see my blog of March 15), human rights campaigners estimate that 85,000 were drowned, but that another 145,000 died of starvation and disease after the event.

A similar pattern can be seen in other floods. When the Yellow and Yangtze rivers burst their banks in 1931, the immediate death toll was around 130,000, but up to 3 million more starved or died from illness later.

As with 9/11, poisons wreak their havoc over many years. The initial death toll from Bhopal was about 3,800, but it’s claimed that another 20,000 died from poisoning over the years that followed (see my blog of Aug 1). While at Chernobyl, only about 30 people died in the first few weeks after the explosion, but some believe it will eventually cause fatal cancers in up to 200,000 (see my blog of April 14).