Jianli County, China (CNN) Most of the passengers on the Eastern Star cruise ship had gone to bed. A violent storm struck and rain pounded the windows with such force that water seeped into the cabins, survivor Zhang Hui told Xinhua, China's state-run news agency.

The ship began tilting, Zhang told the agency, reaching an angle of 45 degrees at one point. Small bottles rolled off the table in his cabin.

"Looks like we are in trouble," he remembers telling a colleague.

When the ship with more than 450 people aboard overturned late Monday, he said, it happened so quickly he only had 30 seconds to grab a life jacket and get out of his cabin. He went into the dark and choppy waters of the Yangtze River during the middle of the storm, later confirmed to be a tornado.

"The raindrops hitting my face felt like hailstones. I tried to hold my breath, but water was forced into my mouth anyway," he told Xinhua.

Unable to swim, he hung onto the life jacket as he floated. He heard other voices in the water, but they soon faded. He saw the lights of a boat, but it passed, apparently not hearing his cries.

"Just hang in there a little longer, I told myself," Zhang said, according to the news agency.

Hours later, around dawn, he floated to shore and crawled to solid ground. He made it to a building, was taken to a hospital and called his family.

"I'm still alive," he told them, Xinhua said. His wife and 15-year-old son broke down upon hearing his voice, he said.

How did a river cruise capsize in China? @McKenzieCNN says weather coould've played a role. http://t.co/zS9IvffEgi http://t.co/a48rs3uFAz — New Day (@NewDay) June 2, 2015

A massive rescue effort is underway to find anybody who might have survived the capsizing of the Eastern Star. The ship was on a pleasure cruise along a stretch of the Yangtze that winds through central China's Hubei province, authorities said. Most of the passengers were senior citizens.

China's state-run broadcaster CCTV reported Wednesday that 14 people had survived, 18 were confirmed dead and hundreds more were unaccounted for.

The other passengers and crew were feared trapped inside the ship, CNN's David McKenzie reported from the scene. Divers were combing compartments onboard, Xinhua reported Wednesday morning.

The survivors included the ship's captain and chief engineer, who were taken into custody for questioning.

On scene of river cruise disaster in #china. Weather is hampering search and hundreds still missing pic.twitter.com/QcWfDP6Zxo — David McKenzie (@McKenzieCNN) June 2, 2015

Video showed the rescue of an elderly woman who surfaced near the hull wearing a diving mask. Holding a rope, she walked up the hull into the arms of rescuers.

Divers plunged into the river and rescue workers gathered along part of the vessel's upturned hull that was sticking out of the water.

They used hammers to knock on the body of the ship, which was almost submerged, and heard responses from inside, a state-run local newspaper reported. Welders used blowtorches in an attempt to cut the hull open.

More than 1,000 armed police officers, equipped with 40 inflatable boats, were participating in the rescue effort, Xinhua said. Rescue efforts continued into the night.

Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Police carry a body to the shore of the Yangtze River in Nanjing, China, on Tuesday, June 9. The Eastern Star cruise ship sank late Monday, June 1, in stormy weather, with more than 450 passengers and crew on board. Hide Caption 1 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Workers clear debris from inside the ship on the Yangtze River on Monday, June 8. Hide Caption 2 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River A worker clears a hallway of the ship on June 8. Hide Caption 3 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Workers remove debris from the Eastern Star ship on the Yangtze River in China's Hubei province on Sunday, June 7. Hide Caption 4 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Paramilitary police in white overalls wait to recover bodies from the ship after it was righted and lifted by cranes from the Yangtze River in Jianli, China, on Friday, June 5. Hide Caption 5 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescue workers look at the sunken ship as it is lifted by cranes. Hide Caption 6 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescue personnel rest next to empty stretchers on the riverbank on June 5. Hide Caption 7 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescue personnel carry the bodies of victims away from the banks of the Yangtze River in Jianli County, China, on Wednesday, June 3. Hide Caption 8 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescue workers attempt to cut into the hull of the overturned ship on June 3. Hide Caption 9 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Relatives of passengers await news in Jingzhou, China, on June 3. Hide Caption 10 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Two women comfort each other on Tuesday, June 2, at a Nanjing, China, hotel, where relatives of passengers trapped in the capsized cruise ship gathered. Hide Caption 11 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescuers search for survivors from the capsized ship in the Yangtze River in Jingzhou on June 2. Hide Caption 12 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescuers work at the site of the overturned passenger ship on China's Yangtze River on June 2. Hide Caption 13 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River A survivor is carried onto the riverbank after being rescued on June 2. Hide Caption 14 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River A man watches rescue efforts on June 2. Hide Caption 15 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescuers search for survivors on June 2. Hide Caption 16 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River In this still frame from CCTV video, a rescue worker listens for voices from inside as he taps the hull of the capsized vessel. Hide Caption 17 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescue workers carry a survivor from the hull of the ship on June 2. Hide Caption 18 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Relatives of passengers wait for information at a hotel in Nanjing, China, on June 2. Hide Caption 19 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River The body of a victim is brought onto the shore on June 2. Hide Caption 20 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescue workers arrive near the capsized ship on June 2. Hide Caption 21 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Relatives of passengers wait in Nanjing on June 2. Hide Caption 22 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Rescue workers prepare a boat for the search on June 2. Hide Caption 23 of 24 Photos: Ship sinks in China's Yangtze River Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaks aboard a plane en route to the ship on June 2. Hide Caption 24 of 24

In this case, the majority of the 405 passengers on the cruise were between 50 and 80 years old, according to a list published by state media. The youngest was 3.

There were also 46 crew members and five travel agency workers on board, according to state media. All those on board were reported to be Chinese.

Unless many more people are rescued, the Yangtze River sinking will become the deadliest passenger ship disaster in Asia since the Sewol went down.

Ship capsized during storm

The Eastern Star had been making multiple stops on its journey up the river from Nanjing to Chongqing, a city hundreds of kilometers inland. River cruises along the Yangtze are popular among both Chinese and international tourists.

The Yangtze is the third-longest river in the world, stretching 6,300 kilometers (3,915 miles) from its source in the mountains of Tibet all the way to the East China Sea.

The ship capsized around 9:30 p.m. Monday during a storm over the section of the river that flows through Hubei's Jianli County, authorities said.

It happened so quickly the captain didn't have time to send out a distress signal, Wang Yangsheng of the Yueyang Rescue Center told Xinhua. The rescue center received the alarm from the crew of another boat who saw two people in the water.

The captain and the chief engineer both said the ship had been hit by a "longjuanfeng," a Chinese word that can be translated as cyclone or tornado, Xinhua reported.

The China Meteorological Center said a tornado less than 1 kilometer in diameter and lasting 15 to 20 minutes occurred, China Daily reported. The storm had wind speeds reaching 12 on the Beaufort scale , which calculates to 64-plus mph, the center reported.

Alarm raised by survivor

Local authorities launched rescue efforts after receiving a phone call from a survivor who managed to swim ashore, according to Chinese media.

The sunken ship is now about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the shore, where the river is around 15 meters (50 feet) deep, China's state-run broadcaster CCTV reported.

Navy frogmen, local militia and helicopters join rescue task for capsized #Yangtze ship pic.twitter.com/GP1IjQvLSR — China Xinhua News (@XHNews) June 2, 2015

Relatives were desperately seeking news.

Yan Mao told CNN that his mother, aunt and two cousins were on the ship after boarding it at Nanjing, the eastern Chinese city where the multiday river cruise began Thursday.

Yan said he was on his way to Wuhan, a major city roughly 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the area where the ship is reported to have gone down.

"I am anxious to find them," he said. "Of course, I believe they are alive, otherwise I wouldn't go there."

Yang Min, a Shanghai resident whose parents and child were on the ship, said he was anxiously waiting with many other families for updates at a local government office in the city.

State-run media showed images of relatives of passengers waiting for information at a makeshift reception center in Fuzhou, the capital of southeast China's Fujian province. In one photo, a man wept while looking at a cell phone. The caption said that he had recognized his mother was being rescued.

Premier arrives at site

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and other senior officials arrived Tuesday at the site of the disaster to oversee the large-scale emergency response.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, center in blue shirt, and others view the rescue operation Tuesday on the Yangtze River.

To help with the rescue effort, authorities reduced the amount of water being discharged from the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric plant, which is upstream from the sunken ship, state media reported.

More than 4,000 people and 110 vessels have taken part in the search and rescue, Chinese Transport Minister Yang Chuantang said at a news conference. Divers have been called in from all around the country, he said.

A CNN team saw scores of military trucks and buses on an expressway heading toward the site of the sinking. Each one was packed with soldiers wearing orange life vests.

Debate on social media

Chinese social media users weren't waiting for the results of any official investigation before launching into a debate on whether to blame humans or the bad weather for the disaster.

"What could the captain have done?" asked one top-rated comment in a popular conversation thread on Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog service in China.

But another top-rated comment wanted to know if pre-emptive measures could have been taken: "How could meteorologists not have forecast the weather situation? If they did, why didn't they notify those in charge of the ship?"