At least 41 Chinese tourists dead from Phuket boat capsize

The bodies of 41 Chinese tourists have been pulled from the waters off the coast of the Thai resort island of Phuket after a tourist boat went down during a violent storm on Thursday afternoon. 11 passengers remain missing.

The Phoenix was one of a number of boats that ignored weather warnings that day, deciding instead to take a large group of Chinese tourists out for a day-trip to the scenic island of Ko He. The ship keeled over in a sudden storm after being battered by five-meter-tall waves in the Andaman Sea, sinking down 40 meters below the water’s surface.

There were 101 people on board the boat — 89 tourists, all but two being from China, and 12 crew members. 49 have been rescued. Divers and Thai officials are still searching for the remaining missing passengers. Authorities have said that five of them might actually be alive, meaning that, fortunately, they may not have boarded the Phoenix on Thursday. Already, it’s been discovered that several of the passengers who had booked passage on the boat ended up not taking the boat ride for one reason or another.

A pair of Chinese rescue teams have arrived to help Thai divers search the waters of Andaman. Thai authorities had planned to lift the sunken boat on Sunday, but were forced to delay these plans due to more bad weather.

Of the 41 Chinese tourists that have been confirmed dead, 13 of them were children — eight boys and five girls. According to survivors, when the boat capsized, many of the children were on the air-conditioned second floor, trying to keep cool, and didn’t have enough time to escape before the boat was already underwater.

CGTN relays the account of one survivor, a 57-year-old tourist from Jinhua in Zhejiang province named Zheng Lanqing who was the only one of his five family members to make it out of the incident with his life.

“It was sunny when we sailed off. My daughter and son-in-law were on the second floor with their baby.” Zheng was quoted as saying. “But it’s around 4 pm. The weather had an abrupt change, and our boat was jolting strongly like a fish skipped and jumped. We were given life jackets around 20 minutes later, and a raft came near us. We were asked to jump onto the raft.”

Zheng’s wife told him to jump first and he did so, assuming that she would quickly follow behind. Instead, the boat suddenly capsized, leaving Zheng as the only member of his family on the raft.

Another survivor, Huang Xiaofeng, says that he feels extremely lucky that both his son and his wife were feeling unwell on Thursday and did not accompany him on the day trip. CGTN also relays his account of the moment that the boat began to sink.

“The crew told us to stay inside and don’t move,” he said. “When they asked us to escape, the stern had tilted down. Water submerged the cabin just one minute after I rushed out. A lot of people cannot vacate the boat because the water blocked the doors and windows, though they were wearing the life jacket.”

The friends and family members of those tourists who were injured, killed, or remain unaccounted for have begun to arrive in Phuket, searching for information about their loved ones. “There are so many family members back home waiting on our updates. The hardest thing is waiting. This kind of pain most people just can’t understand,” said one man from Jiangsu province who lost his two nieces in the accident with three more family members remaining missing.

The captain of the Phoenix has been charged with negligence leading to damages, injury, and death. The captain has denied these charges. Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan has blamed the tragedy on Chinese tour operators’ lack of respect for Thai safety regulations.

“Some Chinese use Thai nominees to bring Chinese tourists in … they did not heed warnings … which is why this incident happened. This needs to be remedied,” Reuters quotes Prawit as saying.

This calamity off the shores of Phuket has been largely overshadowed in international media by another in northern Thailand where 12 boys and their football coach were trapped in a cave in remote Chiang Rai Province. Four of the boys were rescued yesterday, making the harrowing, hours-long journey through dark, narrow, and submerged passageways with the help of a team of professional divers. It’s expected that another rescue operation will get underway shortly.

[Images via CGTN]

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