Four killed in yacht accident on Taihu Lake

Four college students - half of the passengers on a yacht on Taihu Lake, Jiangsu province, on Wednesday - were killed after the vessel carrying them hit a cable connecting two cargo ships.

Wu Jiayi, a 22-year-old tour guide and student at the East China University of Political Science and Law, and Yang Huizheng, a freshman at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, were confirmed dead on Thursday. The bodies of two other students, Xu Haotian and Xu Zhexing, were dragged from the water on Thursday.

The Suzhou maritime safety administration said the cable that the yacht hit was being used by one cargo ship to tug another that was without power. The yacht was driven between the two vehicles at about 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

The cable cut off the yacht's roof, causing it to fall onto the passengers onboard, who, besides the tour guide and captain, included six freshmen from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

"The ceiling suddenly fell and something smashed my head," a victim with the surname Peng told Suzhou television news. "It really hurt. All that I knew when I opened my eyes again was that all of my classmates had fallen down in front of me."

Two students sitting in the back row of a group of seats aboard the yacht were thrown into the lake.

Their bodies were found on Thursday, one at 11:20 a.m. and the other at 1:10 p.m. By that time, searches for victims had been going on for more than 20 hours in a 10-square-kilometer area near the accident site.

People were prohibited from taking part in water sports both during and after the rescue.

The four survivors on the yacht were also injured but are now in stable condition. The Shanghai Ruijin Hospital spokeswoman said two of them had been transferred to Shanghai on Thursday.

"They're now in our neurosurgery care units," she said. "Both of them have fractured skulls and one has cracked vertebrae."

She said another passenger suffered only slight injuries and has been discharged from the hospital.

The Suzhou police have detained the yacht captain.

The local media quoted a search-and-rescue worker as saying that "the main causes (of the accident) were that the yacht captain didn't expect there would be a cable connecting two ships and that nobody on the boat wore life jackets".

The victim named Peng, however, said nobody had asked the passengers to wear life vests.

The official cause of the accident has not been announced and the local government said it is still investigating the case.

"Conspicuous signals such as red flags, life rings or lights should always be attached to cables that connect two vessels to warn nearby ships in cases like this," said Huang Jianwei, of the Shanghai maritime safety administration's department of navigation management.

"If this had happened in Shanghai, we would have also sent over an escort vessel to ensure the safety (of the tugboat and the ship). The situation in Taihu, though, is pretty complicated because all sorts of vessels are there, including ships used in aquaculture, tourism and transport."

Gong Yu, marketing manager for the Shanghai-based travel agency 54traveler, which organized the trip for the students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said young people should pay more attention to safety.

The amount of compensation offered for each student who died in the accident is expected to be 670,000 yuan (US$106,000), according to a news conference held in Shanghai on Thursday afternoon. The compensation is to be paid by the People's Insurance Company of China.