A technician at Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) Daguan Power Plant (大觀電廠) in Nantou County’s Shueili Township (水里) was on Monday given a suspended 20-month prison sentence for his role in failing to prevent a flash flood that killed four campers in September last year.
The technician, a man surnamed Su (蘇), was also sentenced to 20 days of penal servitude, which can be converted to a fine of NT$1,000 per day, for falsifying his work diary, the court said.
However, the court suspended the prison sentence for five years, saying he had shown signs of remorse and reached a settlement to compensate the victims’ families.
Photo courtesy of a member of the public
The ruling can be appealed.
Su, who was on duty in Wujie Dam’s control room when the incident happened, failed to appropriately respond to a glitch that caused the dam’s Gate No. 6 to open in the early hours of Sept. 13 last year, the court said.
About 193,440m3 of water was discharged from the dam without warning, resulting in the deaths of four people, who had been part of a group of six who were camping downstream from the dam near Lisi Creek (栗栖溪) in Nantou County’s Renai Township (仁愛), it said.
The opening of the gate set off an alarm in the control room at about 4:26am after the discharge of water, the court said.
However, Su did not notice the alarm nor the sudden drop in the reservoir’s water levels, it said.
At about 4:27am, a local resident, surnamed Yang (楊), alerted the control room to flash flooding downstream, the court said, adding that while this prompted Su to begin closing Gate No. 6, he did not fully close it until about 4:43am.
At that time, five of the six campers from two families, one surnamed Lu (盧) and the other surnamed Lai (賴), were sleeping in tents in the creek bed about 5.5km from the dam. The mother of the Lu family was sleeping in her car.
Of the five swept away, only the father of the Lai family survived after swimming to safety.
The Lai’s seven-year-old son and all of the three members of the Lu family — a 53-year-old man, 48-year-old woman and their 12-year-old daughter — were killed.
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