12 charged over deadly explosion in Taiwan
Print Edition
DEADLY gas explosions in Taiwan were caused by “multiple human errors” prosecutors said yesterday as they charged 12 people, including the head of a chemical company and government officials.
The disaster killed 32 people and wounded more than 300 in southern Kaohsiung city when explosions in leaking underground pipelines sparked massive fires on July 31, leaving huge trenches in the middle of some streets and vehicles thrown onto the roofs of buildings.
In the first indictments since the blasts, prosecutors charged the chairman of LCY Chemical Corp, which operated the pipeline, and 11 others with causing death and injuries by professional negligence and offenses against public safety.
“Multiple human errors led to the grave tragedies of 32 people losing their lives and 321 people being injured,” prosecutors said in a statement.
The accused “completely ignored whether the facilities transporting highly hazardous materials were still intact and posed no safety risk after 20 years and disregarded the lives and properties of numerous people living in areas the pipes were passing which ... led to the catastrophes,” according to the statement from the district prosecutor’s office.
Kaohsiung-based LCY Chemical failed to regularly maintain the underground pipes transporting propene which caused them to rust and sustain the damage that led to the explosions, it said.
The company also carried the wrong procedure to test for leaks and continued to transport the gas to its factory, it added.
Three employees of a company contracted by LCY Chemical to deliver propene and three former officials who failed to properly monitor and inspect construction of the pipelines when they were completed in the 1990s were also charged.
The others indicted were all LCY Chemical employees.
The most serious of the charges — “causing death by professional negligence” — is punishable by a maximum five-year jail term.
City officials have said that around 10 tons of propene leaked from the underground pipelines operated by LCY Chemical in the hours before the first explosion.
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