Wed, Jul 26, 2000 page3

• Firefighters to share blame for Pachang deaths

  CREEK TRAGEDY Investigations have shown that responsibility for Saturday's deaths can be spread over a wide range of agencies and officials

  • By Jou Ying-cheng / STAFF REPORTER
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  The prosecutor investigating the Pachang Creek (八掌溪) tragedy yesterday found that the Chiayi County Fire Department made the fatal mistake of not bringing effective rescue equipment and, therefore, missed an opportunity to save the lives of the four workers in the incident.

  Public outrage and official investigations have focused primarily on how requests for a helicopter were made and why the air force and airborne police did not respond to the requests in time.

  But Chiayi prosecutor Yeh Keng-hsu (葉耿旭), however, examined the accident scene yesterday and found that the four workers could have been saved had the fire department rescuers brought rope-throwing equipment.

  He tested throwing equipment at the scene and threw an end of rope more than 250m to the other side of the river.

  "The equipment works. If there had been one rescuer on the opposite bank catching the other end of the rope and the rescuers holding two ends of the rope had moved the rope to within the four workers' reach, then the four would not have been swept away by the torrent," Yeh said.

  Lin Chung-ho (林中和), Yang Tzu-chung (楊子忠), Liu Chih (劉智) and his wife Wu Mei-kuei (吳梅桂) all perished in a flash flood while working in the creek bed. Footage of the four was broadcast live on TV while they waited more than two hours for rescue. The group was ultimately swept away in the torrent before a rescue helicopter could arrive.

  Previously the Chiayi Fire Department said its personnel tried the equipment twice but the river was to wide for the rope to reach the other side.

  But yesterday, after the prosecutor's test, the fire department issued a new version of events.

  "The Fanlu (番路) subsection, which arrived first, was not equipped with the apparatus. The Chungpu (中埔) subsection did not bring one. The Chuchi (竹崎) subsection brought a broken one and when the Minhsiung (民雄) subsection arrived with another one, it was already too late -- the four workers were already gone," Chiayi County Fire Department officials said yesterday.

  At a press conference yesterday, the former Director-General of National Fire Administration (NFA) Chen Hung-yi (陳弘毅), who resigned over the tragedy, said his administration's main mistake was "not having made a double check."

  Chen mourned the victims and apologized to the public. He also said local fire departments are able to make requests directly to the airborne police, and not necessarily via the administration, though the administration's Rescue Command Center could have made a follow-up phone call to the airborne police to verify the latter dispatched a helicopter.

  Chen blamed officials from the Chiayi County Fire Department for being unfamiliar with relevant rules and said the direct superiors of the local fire departments are the city mayors and county commissioners, rather than the NFA.

  When asked if he felt his resignation was unfair, he replied that "strictly speaking, the NFA's only fault was failing to make a follow-up phone call."

  Meanwhile, a rumor circulated yesterday that the pilot of the air force's rescue helicopter was drunk at the time of the accident and therefore the helicopter could not be dispatched. The story was told on ETTV by a person who claimed to be an inside source at the air force rescue unit.

  But the Ministry of National Defense and the pilot have both publicly denied the rumor.

  "I do not drink alcohol at all and I do not rule out taking legal action [against the person who spread the rumor]," the pilot said.

  Two Control Yuan members yesterday made an investigation tour of the Chiayi air force base and said there was no evidence to verify the rumor.

  The Council of Labor Affairs has also launched an investigation into whether the employer of the workers is responsible. If so, the employer could face imprisonment of up to three years, a CLA official said.
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