The Hualien District Court on Monday found the proprietor of a leisure sports company and three tour guides guilty of negligence in causing the death of a participant of a “river tracing” event after the four defendants ignored a police warning on the dangers of afternoon thunderstorms and flash floods.
The Hualien District Court handed down a 12-month prison sentence to Tseng Yi-wen (曾義文) for the incident, which resulted in the death of a 46-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃) in August last year.
Tseng specializes in organizing river tracing events, also known as river trekking or mountain stream climbing, where people negotiate their way upstream, usually in a mountainous region.
An investigation found that Tseng and three guides took a group of 32 people on a corporate outing at Shapotang Stream (砂婆礑溪) in Hualien’s Siulin Township (秀林).
Local police officers forbade the group from going on the trip, citing inclement weather and the possible dangers, but Tseng instructed his guides to take the group to another spot further downstream, bypassing the police checkpoint.
Police Captain Yu Kuo-hua (游國華) said he told Tseng and his group not to go river tracing that afternoon since thick clouds were gathering and it looked like it was going to rain, which it did shortly afterward.
The downpour led to flash floods with water gushing down the stream, scattering the group and leaving many of them floundering in the water.
Although Tseng and the three guides were able swimmers and managed to rescue most of the group, Huang went missing. She was later found drowned after her body became stuck between rocks.
The judge found Tseng and the three guides guilty, as the guidelines of the Chinese Taipei Stream Association say that one guide is required for every six river tracing participants, while more guides are required if the group contains mostly inexperienced people.
The judge also cited the guideline which states that guides should not engage in the activity during storms or heavy rain, because mountainous areas are prone to flash floods.
In related news, a storm on Sunday afternoon triggered a flash flood which trapped eight river tracing enthusiasts in Fongmei Stream (風美溪) in Miaoli County’s Nanchuang Township’s (南庄).
The local fire department dispatched more than 20 firefighters and it took them more than four hours to rescue the eight enthusiasts.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS