China Ferry Calamity Kills 150+

Thousands of rescue workers scoured wind-whipped seas and shores Thursday for survivors from a ferry that caught fire and foundered off eastern China, killing more than 150 people and leaving more than 100 others missing.

The 9,000-ton Dashun, carrying 312 passengers and crew, was wrecked amid gale-force winds and towering waves late Wednesday on a heavily used shipping route that connects Yantai city, in eastern China's Shandong province, with the northeastern port of Dalian.

On Thursday, more than 24 hours after the ship's first distress call, just 36 people had been rescued from cold seas. More than 150 people were killed, and at least 100 others were missing, a state-run China News Service said.

With temperatures hovering around freezing, a Yantai city spokesman said there was little hope of finding people alive. Storm-force winds also were hampering rescue work, the spokesman said, giving just his surname, Meng.

Bodies were found washed up on beaches and in the sea, he said.

"It was very tragic. The sea was covered with bodies," said a Yantai city fire brigade officer, who refused to give his name.

Asked if rescuers found survivors, he replied: "Yes, too few."

First word of the disaster came from a passenger with a cell phone on board the ship who called Dalian police, an official at the city's Sea Inspection Bureau said.

The fire started in the ferry's lower vehicle deck when the vessel was about 20 miles out from the port, the China News Service said. The ship began heading back to port and sending out distress signals.

But fierce waves and winds prevented the more than 30 naval vessels, tugs and fishing boats that were dispatched from getting close to the troubled ferry, the report said.

The fire spread to upper decks and the ship lost power and steering, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Contact with the ship, operated by the Yanda Ferry Company, was lost about three and a half hours later, it said.

Xinhua said the wreckage eventually ran aground, but the China News Service said the ship was destroyed by the fire and sank.

More than 5,000 people from coastal villages searched a 28-mile stretch of coastline for survivors, Xinhua said. A helicopter searched the sea for bodies and debris Thursday morning, but waves up to 16 feet high obscured visibility.

State television showed a beach littered with thousands of oranges, apples and other apparent wreckage, including what appeared to be at least three life rafts.

Yantai is 100 miles from Dalian, just across the Bohai Strait leading into the Bohai Sea, and the waters there can be tempestuous.

It was the second accident in five weeks of a vessel operated by the Yanda Ferry Co., the Dalian Evening News said. On Oct. 17, the "Shenglu" caught fire and sank near Dalian, leaving three people missing. Rescuers managed to save 158 of the ship's 161 passengers and crew.

The Yantai to Dalian shipping route s a major link between east and northeast China, with 3.5 million people and 200,000 vehicles making the crossing each year, the China News Service said.