A total of 68,780 people attended the two exhibition games to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Japan’s Yomiuri Giants in the Taipei Dome this weekend, but politicians and spectators complained that crowd control was lacking and the roof leaked.
Organizers and Taipei Dome operator Farglory Group (遠雄集團) said they had passed the most severe test of the stadium on Saturday.
A sellout crowd of 37,890 attended the first game between the Taichung-based CTBC Brothers and the Giants, setting a new record for the largest turnout at a baseball game in Taiwan. The previous record was 25,000 at Kaohsiung’s Chengcing Lake Baseball Stadium during a 2001 Baseball World Cup game between Taiwan and the US.
Photo: CNA
Saturday was also the first time that more than 36,000 seats were made available at the Taipei Dome since it opened in December last year for the Asian Baseball Championship.
Last night, 30,890 people attended the second game between the Taoyuan-based Rakuten Monkeys and the Giants — the stadium’s second-largest turnout. Despite the smaller crowd, people still reported congestion inside the venue.
At the first game, spectators said crowd flow management was poor, there was a lack of clear signage and two escalators broke down, leading to further congestion.
A limited number of gates were open, resulting in congestion on the B1 level for those wanting to get to the infield and outfield seats above that, spectators said.
The most noticeable problem was water leaking from the roof onto fourth-floor seats in zone 209.
A group of four people who said they had been affected by the leak said no staff came to assist them until after the first inning, so they had to use an umbrella.
They wrote online that the workers were not eager to solve the problem, and only offered them fold-out seats in the walkway, which they did not accept.
Later another, more senior staffer tried to convince them to sit in the walkway, but they demanded to see a manager, they said.
Farglory Group general manager Jacky Yang (楊舜欽) issued an apology yesterday.
An electricity surge meant there was no power going to the two escalators, and the leak came from the piping, not from cracks in the roof, Yang said.
The leak “affected about 10 spectators, and we apologized to them and took them to another seating area ... and offered other compensation,” Yang said.
An inspection found three leaks, two in outfield areas and one near the infield, Yang added.
“It is an international embarrassment,” Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Chien Shu-pei (簡舒培) said, adding that the current and previous Taipei administrations should be held accountable.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chan Wei-yuan (詹為元) said that the city government must launch an investigation.
“Before approval was given for the Dome to operate, city councilors demanded that Farglory carry out a complete inspection to root out all potential flaws, but they did not do so,” Chan said.
People attending the game also complained that Taipei Mass Transit Corp (臺北大眾捷運) did not open the special access that would allow them to enter the venue directly from the MRT station, resulting in them having to go outside in the rain.
Additional reporting by CNA
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS