A 21-year-old woman died yesterday of severe burns and complications five months after she was injured in the Color Play Asia disaster at the Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) water park in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里).
Wu Wen-chi’s (吳玟錡) death brings the toll from the June 27 fire to 15, with most of the people killed aged in their early 20s.
Wu, one of more than 500 victims of the fire, suffered burns to 87.5 percent of her body and had skin and tissue surgery the day after she was injured, the Taipei Veterans General Hospital said.
However, over the past five months she developed multiple complications, including septic shock and acute respiratory distress syndrome, the hospital said.
On Aug. 15 Wu was placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a machine that functions like an artificial lung, the hospital said.
Doctors performed cardiac surgery on Saturday after the patient went into heart failure, but she subsequently suffered septic shock and multiple organ failure, the hospital said.
Wu was released from hospital in critical condition at 2:30am yesterday and died at 3:36am at her home after an endotracheal tube was removed, the hospital said.
She was the 15th person to have died since the June 27 incident at the water park.
A fire erupted when colored cornstarch powder that was being used for party effects ignited. About 500 people, most of them in their teens and early 20s, were injured in the fire.
Taipei Veterans General Hospital said it had treated 43 people, six of whom had sustained burns to more than 80 percent of their bodies. Six of the 43 burns victims are still hospitalized, but are improving, the hospital said.
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