Six people were injured on Saturday when a joss paper brazier collapsed at Gaoshanyen Fude Temple (高山巖福德宮) in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春).
Many Taiwanese flock to temples during the Lunar New Year holiday to ask for gods’ blessings and pray for a good year, and many worhshipers burn joss paper in braziers after praying.
The accident happened at about 4:50pm, when several bricks on the brazier’s inner wall suddenly collapsed.
Six people who were standing by the brazier were injured by flames and embers, and were taken to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Hengchun Tourism Hospital.
Four of them were transferred to Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at 9pm, hospital media relations official Huang Tsui-ping (黃翠蘋) said yesterday.
One of the patients, a 48-year-old woman, was on Sunday intubated due to aspiration pneumonia, Huang said.
She also had second-degree burns on both forearms, her chest, face and neck, Huang said, adding that the patient’s tubes had been removed as of noon yesterday.
A five-year-old boy sustained second-degree burns on approximately 10 percent of his body and was hospitalized. A 56-year-old woman with burns on 3 percent of her arms and 1 percent of her neck was also hospitalized, while a 58-year-old man with second-degree burns on 1 percent of his right ankle, right side of his face and right hand has been discharged, she said.
The temple has sealed the brazier and said that it would have technicians inspect its structure to understand why it collapsed, adding that it would follow up on the patients’ conditions and look for ways to help them.
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