Wed, Aug 02, 2000 page1

• Prosecutors indict 7 for river deaths

  PACHANG CREEK Several public employees were identified as negligent in their duties and have been charged by Chiayi prosecutors

  • By Jou Ying-cheng / STAFF REPORTER
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  Seven were indicted yesterday for their roles in the Pachang Creek (八掌溪) tragedy in which four workers were drowned in flash flooding on July 22.

  Premier Tang Fei (唐飛) also accepted yesterday evening the resignations of Chen Hung-yi (陳弘毅), head of the National Fire Administration Administrator, and Ding Yung-chin (丁原進), head of the National Police Administration.

  The indicted include the owner and site supervisor of the riverbed construction project, staff members of the Chiayi Fire Department and the National Fire Department and a pilot of the airborne police.

  In addition, a file describing the role of a major at the Ministry of National Defense's Rescue and Cooperation Center was handed over to military prosecutors, who are still investigating the incident.

  "As the contractor and supervisor, respectively, of the construction project, Chang Yung-hui (張永輝) and Kuo Ching-shen (郭慶申) failed to fulfill their the legal obligation to ensure the safety of the workers," said Tseng Ming-fung (曾銘芳), head prosecutor at the Chiayi District Prosecutors' Office, at a press conference yesterday.

  The indictment states that weather forecasts issued the previous day had warned several times of sudden torrential rain, but Chang and Kuo ignored them and asked their employees to work on the riverbed anyway.

  "The workers should have been -- but were not -- given any communication or safety equipment except for a 28m-long rope. The river is about 80 to 90m in width. When they learned that the flooding was imminent it was too late to escape," Tseng said.

  Chang and Kuo were indicted on a charge of occupational negligence causing death -- an offense carrying a maximum imprisonment of five years.

  Yu Ching-hung (游景宏), head of the Chiayi Fire Department's Chungpu Subsection, and Chen Feng-jen (陳豐仁), a senior member of the subsection, face the same charge for their failure to bring and use rope-throwing equipment.

  "It should have occurred to Yu that in such a situation the rescue team must bring the [necessary] equipment to the scene but he didn't ask his team members to do so," Tseng said. "Chen not only failed to bring the equipment but also failed to ask any of his junior colleagues to go back to fetch it once at the scene."

  Tseng also said that Chen was resigned to wait for a helicopter to aid in the rescue and do nothing more. "Chen even said that he did not know that they had rope-throwing equipment at their base. Was this the proper attitude for a senior rescuer to take?"

  Hsu Ching-hui (許清輝) and Lu Wen-tsun (呂文村) were the officials on duty at the National Fire Administration's command center. They were indicted on a charge of negligence leading to the catastrophe.

  The indictment says that Hsu and Lu repeatedly neglected requests from the Chiayi Fire Department to apply for helicopter rescue assistance.

  As for the airborne pilot, Yang Tao-hung (楊道宏), Tseng said that between the time the airborne police received the emergency call at around 5:57pm and when the helicopter took off at 7:12pm, Yang was trying to shift responsibility to the Air Force's Seagull Air Rescue Group in Chiayi, as he was reluctant to undertake the rescue.

  Furthermore, Tseng said, because the four workers were swept away before Yang had even taken off, he forged the record, giving a take-off time of 17 minutes earlier than it actually was. Yang faces charges of negligence and forgery.

  Tseng said that the official on duty at the command center of the National Defense's Rescue and Cooperation Center was also liable.
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