Cruise Ship No. 2, Yangtze River Futai, set off for the task.
The crew were ready to assist Wuhan. Media. Photographed by Yan Xiaodong, Reporter of Three Gorges Daily
(Reporter: Wang Ying; Correspondent: Wu You) With full love and blessing, six Yichang tourist ships set sail from the Three Gorges Tourist Center at 15:00 on February 20thto assist Wuhan, providing logistics support services of “Cruise Hotel” for medical teams who came to Wuhan. The total number of the ship beds reached 1267.
Due to the epidemic situation, hotels in Wuhan tended to be fully taken. Thus, to relieve the pressure of accommodation, our city urgently called up tourist ships to assist Wuhan. In order to complete this job with high quality, high efficiency, high refinement and no mistakes, the MCTA contacted the shipping company overnight, communicated actively, and dispatched personnel and materials to ensure that the crew could return to work as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the crew did emergency health examination and anti-epidemic knowledge training, all the six ships were disinfected all-round and sufficient necessary anti-epidemic materials were provided to ensure the crew’s safe.
At the departure, the full equipped crew were high in spirits, shouting “Come on, Yichang” “Come on, Wuhan”. The leaders of the Municipal Transportation Bureau, the Maritime Bureau and Yichang Transport Group came to see the crew off with anti-epidemic materials.
184 crew members of 3 shipping companies were sent to Wuhan this time, including 64 experienced members with an average 20 years of driving, who were familiar with the 660km channel from Yichang to Wuhan. Each tourist ship has made contingency plans for extremely severe weather with perfect fire-fighting facilities and water-electricity supply. Besides, a multi-functional garbage ship was dispatched to deal with the 6 cruise ships’ domestic garbage.
After arriving in Wuhan, the moving “floating hotels” will work under the unified dispatch of Wuhan City and try to help createa good accommodation environment for the hardworking “soldiers in white” so that they can have enough rest and sufficient energy to win the battle.