Less than a day after the Communist party’s top leaders pledged to attend to the needs of grieving families following the country’s worst shipping disaster, cracks are appearing in the government’s control of fallout from the incident.

A distraught family member burst into a press conference on Friday in Jianli county, near the site where a passenger ferry travelling upriver from Nanjing to Chongqing capsized in heavy winds on Monday.

Xia Yuchen, whose older sister was a passenger on the Eastern Star, pushed past guards restricting access to the press conference. After an official initially appeared to try to prevent her from speaking, Ms Xia gave an impassioned plea for a thorough investigation of the human causes of the disaster, insisting it could not be blamed solely on bad weather.