The son of a fishing boat captain who died on Wednesday in seas off Badouzih (八斗子), Keelung City, yesterday accused the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) of producing an inaccurate weather report which he said led to his father's death.
"We learned from the weather report on TV that the wind strength off Badouzih would drop to five [on the Beaufort Scale] in the afternoon, However, it didn't weaken. On the contrary, it got stronger," Wei Cheng-Tei (魏德成) said.
His father, Wei Kuo-chih (
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
He made the accusation at a press conference in the legislature hosted by Chinese National Party (KMT) lawmaker Hsu Shao-ping (
The Secretary-General of the Keelung Fishermen's Association Hsieh Fan-tung (
Daniel Wu (
"We said that there would be strong winds on Tuesday, and we repeated this yesterday. We also called on fishermen to pay attention to this," he said.
"According to the weather report, the strength of average gust was seven and the maximum gust speed was nine which could weaken to five," he said.
Hsu asked Wu to find out why the weather report people heard from the media was not the same as the CWB forecasted.
"The CWB must take responsibility for not being able to supervise whether the media broadcast the weather report accurately," Hsu said.
"There is room for improvement in communications between the CWB and the media ... especially in terms of providing weather information to fishermen," Wu said.
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