The New Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office has ruled out several possible causes for the dust explosion at the Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) water park nearly two months ago, but its conclusion on the cause is still pending official reports from the city government, New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said yesterday.
The explosion happened in May, killing 11 people and injuring 488.
According to media reports, the minimum ignition temperature for the colored dust powder is 430°C and after repeated testing, the office ruled out cigarettes, static electricity and other causes as potential sources of ignition.
The reports point to the beam lights often used at parties as the likely source of the ignition, saying that the lights were the closest possible source to the original site of ignition — the west end of the stage — and that the bulbs used in the lights could have reached temperatures of up to 450°C due to prolonged use.
Hou said the disaster report has not yet been finalized and was still being looked into by prosecutors and the fire investigation division of the city’s Fire Department.
The city government is still waiting for the assessment report, Hou said.
When asked about the possibility that the Formosa Fun Coast may seek to absolve itself of responsibility over the issue because the powder and lighting were all provided by Lu Chung-chi (呂忠吉), the head organizer of the Color Play (玩色創意) event, Hou said that is pending investigation.
The questions were due to Hou’s repeated comments that the park should not expect to escape from the incident unscathed.
Meanwhile, addressing the concerns of family members that it might be difficult to ask for reparations due to a lack of certainty over who is responsible for the incident, Hou said that the city government is looking into the incident, along with the prosecutors’ office.
Hou said the government would do its best to determine who is responsible and that it would not let anyone who is criminally responsible off the hook.
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
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 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
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