Three of the five men inspecting a drilling operation near Houlong River (後龍溪) in Miaoli County were washed out to sea by rapids yesterday, with two drowning and one surviving the incident, CPC Corp, Taiwan said.
Wang Meng-hsuan (王孟炫), deputy director-general of CPC’s drilling department, said the company had set up 170 drills 30m off the coast of Houlong a year ago to determine whether the area held natural resources, and the team — three CPC staffers and two contractors — were sent to inspect the results yesterday.
The two deceased were a 36-year-old contractor surnamed Tu (涂) and a 36-year-old CPC staff member surnamed Chen (陳). The third individual swept out to sea who survived the incident was another CPC staffer surnamed Chiu (邱).
Police said Chiu swam to shore and alerted the police and fire department.
Chiu managed to help Tu ashore, but Tu had no vital signs by the time police arrived on the scene, the officers said.
The National Airborne Service Corps found Chen 1km outside the Houlong River estuary at about 2pm yesterday.
Both Tu and Chen had lost vital signs before arriving at the hospital, police said.
Wang said that over the past year, CPC personnel always wore life vests and took rubber rafts to inspect the drilling points.
Because it was low tide when the team visited, they decided to walk the distance to the site, Wang said.
However, the team got caught in violent rapids while attempting to cross, he said.
The company will pay compensation to Chen’s family according to his years of service, Wang said.
CPC will also assist Chen’s family, he said.
Police said they would launch an investigation into the matter.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not