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.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS