Prosecutors yesterday wrapped up a two-month investigation and announced the indictments of 10 individuals, including officials and technical staff of a contracting company, in an April 10 steel girder incident in Taichung that left four people dead and four injured.
The incident occurred during the construction of an elevated section of the Taichung MRT’s Green Line.
A 209-tonne curved box girder fell from a height of about three stories onto a busy road just after 5pm during the late afternoon rush hour, reports said.
Yesterday’s indictments by the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office cited human error, a lack of worksite supervision and dereliction of duty in breaches of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (職業安全衛生法) and charges of professional negligence causing death (業務過失致死罪).
Among the primary causes of the fatal incident was a decision reached by company officials, site supervisors and technical staff to not install a temporary support frame for the girder, prosecutors said, in what officials described as an attempt to reduce expenditure and accelerate the work schedule.
Without the temporary support frame, crews were unable to balance the weight of the curved box girder properly when hoisting it onto the concrete pillars, which led to the collapse.
Leading the list of indictments was Taipei City Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) associate engineer Wang Chi-shen (王起森), who was in overall charge of supervision at the work site.
The Taichung MRT project was commissioned to DORTS, due to its experience planning and constructing the Taipei system.
Prosecutors charged Wang with neglecting his supervisory duties, as he was not at the work site on the day of the accident.
Wang also faces forgery charges, with officials saying he altered daily inspection reports 10 days later on April 20 in an attempt to falsify work supervision records.
Prosecutors also said that Wang failed to report and stop numerous breaches of safety rules by contractors, including hoisting steel girders during the day, a task which the city’s regulations stipulate can be performed only between 11:30pm and 5:30am.
The other individuals charged were officials, staff and workers of the contractors, which included Far Eastern Construction Co, China Steel Structure Co, Bi Jie Hoist Co and Chin Yi Co.
In the statement announcing the indictments, prosecutors cited numerous instances of negligence, inadequate supervision, breaches of safety regulations and the contravening of professional work standards at all organizational levels ranging from DORTS engineers overseeing construction, to contracting firm supervisors and work site crews.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai