BBC News
Date: 29 June 2015

A woman who was injured after a fire tore through the crowds at an amusement park in

Taiwan has died, officials say.

Doctors decided – with family support – to turn off the life support ventilator of 20-year-old Lee Pei-yu on Monday.

She suffered second-degree burns over 90% of her body and is the first fatality from the disaster. About 500 people were injured in the blaze.

Saturday’s fire started when coloured powder sprayed from the stage onto the audience near Taipei suddenly ignited.

At least 200 people remain in hospital in a critical condition, including the woman’s 12-year-old brother. Eight patients are reported by local media to have life-threatening injuries. More than 1,000 people were near the stage at the time.    [FULL  STORY]

Alex Haas, 26, suffers burns to 90 percent of body

WCVB
Date: Jun 29, 2015

Alex Haas, 26, suffered second- and third-degree burns over 90 percent of his body, his family said.

Haas underwent surgery Sunday night to get circulation back into his legs. Haas is still having trouble getting oxygen into his lungs, family members said.

Haas has been teaching English in Taiwan for almost a year.

Most of the family left New Hampshire on Sunday to be with Haas in Taiwan.

The family has launched a GoFundMe page to get help with medical and travel expenses.

ABC News
Date: Jun 29, 2015
By: RALPH JENNINGS Associated Press

Investigators in Taiwan were focusing Monday on the possibility that a cigarette butt or

spark caused the blaze that burned 498 people, killing one, at a weekend water park party when colored powder sprayed from the stage caught fire.

More than 400 people remained hospitalized, including 202 in serious condition, city officials said. A 20-year-old woman with burns to 90 percent of her body died after being taken off life support with her family’s consent, said a hospital spokeswoman, who spoke anonymously because she wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Taiwan’s Central News Agency said her 12-year-old brother also had burns on 90 percent of his body.

Police recommended criminal charges against the organizer of Saturday’s party, as well as two technicians, at the Formosa Fun Coast park in suburban Taipei.

“It’s still not clear what happened, but there were a number of people smoking and the weather was warm,” New Taipei City news department head Lin Chieh-yu said. Temperatures around greater Taipei topped 36 degrees Celsius (96.8 F) before the party.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/29
By: Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, June 29 (CNA) There has been a huge outpouring of support in Taiwan for the hundreds of people injured in an explosion and fire at a water park in New Taipei on Saturday in the form of cash, blood and legal assistance.

Practicing lawyer Lai Fang-yu (賴芳玉) decided to organize a volunteer team of lawyers to provide legal help to the 500 people

— mostly teenagers and young adults — who were hurt in the dust explosion at Formosa Fun Coast Water Park (八仙樂園).

“Watching those kids running around in the fire, my heart broke,” Lai said on her Facebook page Monday.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-06-29
By: CNA and Staff Reporter

Sometime before 8:30 pm last Saturday, the crowd at the Color Play Asia party at a New

Taipei water park found they were standing almost ankle-deep in a layer of colored dust that had accumulated in front of a stage.

No one thought it would be a problem — until the dust suddenly caught fire.

In the worst disaster of its kind in Taiwan’s history, nearly 500 people — most of them in their teens or twenties — were enveloped in an expanding fireball that turned a drained pool at the Formosa Fun Coast water park in New Taipei’s Bali district into an inferno.

As of Monday morning, 439 people remained hospitalized, 211 of them in intensive care units. One of the victims, a 20-year-old high school graduate, has died of the burns she received to 90% of her body, doctors said.     [FULL  STORY]

POWDER KEG:An expert on fire safety described the environment created by the organizers as meeting all the conditions necessary for an explosion of that type

Taipei Times
Date:  Jun 30, 2015
By: Jake Chung  /  Staff writer, with CNA

As victims of an inferno caused by colored powder catching fire at the Color Play Asia

party in a New Taipei City water park fought for their lives in hospitals yesterday, details of the accident emerged which commentators said indicated that the explosion was an accident waiting to happen.

The incident at Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) water park in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), saw nearly 500 injured when corn starch ignited causing a series of fireballs, which engulfed young people dancing to techno music in a drained swimming pool at about 8:30pm on Saturday

As much as three tonnes of fine cornstarch had been prepared for use during the event, which was in its second year, New Taipei City Deputy Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said.

About 4,000 tickets were sold for the event. Each partygoer paid an entrance fee of NT$1,500 and was given three packets of colored powder, according to the Chinese-language Apple Daily.     [FULL  STORY]

NEARLY 500 INJURED:The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office seized equipment and other evidence, while police questioned five people. New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu said there was no date set for park operations to resume

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 29, 2015
By: Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter, with CNA

The Ministry of Health and Welfare has activated its emergency response mechanism

following the nation’s worst amusement park disaster, in which a fire broke out at New Taipei City’s Formosa Fun Coast (八仙海岸) water park on Saturday night, leaving nearly 500 people injured.

“The ministry has activated an emergency medical case management system to allow hospitals to report information and conditions of patients they have treated,” Department of Medical Affairs Director Wang Tsung-hsi (王宗曦) said yesterday.

Wang said the agency has also requested the health bureaus in Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan — as well as all hospitals, burn wards and intensive care units in these cities — to prepare for more people in need of treatment.

Due to the potential need for skin grafts, the ministry has collaborated with the Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center, the Taiwan Society of Plastic Surgery and other organizations specializing in burns to transport skin donations from the nation’s south, Wang said.     [FULL  STORY]

Defense News0
Date:  June 28, 2015
By: Wendell Minnick

TAIPEI — Missing from discussions at last week’s US-China Strategic and Economic

Dialogue (S&ED) was Taiwan’s significance in China’s land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea, said defense analysts.

Held annually since 2009, the S&ED is a high-level government meeting set alternatively in each other’s capital.

The Taiwan invasion scenario drives all Chinese military planning, force modernization, exercises and training, and this includes the recent land reclamation projects in the South China Sea, said Ian Easton, a China defense specialist at the Project 2049 Institute in Washington.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) views the militarization of these islands as creating an outer defensive perimeter to extend its precision strike battle networks, Easton said. In the event of a Taiwan crisis, there is a “high probability that the US would steam at least two aircraft carrier groups to the Philippine Sea to bolster Taiwan’s defense.”

Since 9/11, the US has had at least one carrier group available for the mission in either the Arabian Gulf or the Indian Ocean, thus forcing the group to pass through the South China Sea to reach the area.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/28
By: Christie Chen

Taipei, June 28 (CNA) The dust explosion at Formosa Fun Coast Water Park in New Taipei Saturday has injured over 500 people, most of them in their teens and 20s, and has left many parents distraught and heartbroken.

The mother of 17-year-old Hsueh Ming-chuan (薛明娟) said her severely burned daughter was lying on an inflatable boat in the water park when she found her, over an hour after the explosion.

“All her skin was gone. Her hands were shaking … and she kept calling for me,” the visibly distraught mother told local reporters Sunday.

Hsueh’s ordeal was shared by many who attended a party at the water park that night, when colored corn starch that was sprayed onto the crowd exploded, engulfing partygoers in fire. Investigations are ongoing to determine the cause of the explosion.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/06/28
By: Sunrise Huang, Wang Hung-kuo and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, June 28 (CNA) The number of people injured in a dust explosion in New Taipei Saturday was revised downward to 498 from an earlier figure of 524, according to the latest statistics released late Sunday by the Public Health Department of the New Taipei city government.

As of 6 p.m., the 498 injured were being treated at 43 hospitals around Taiwan, the department said, explaining that some of the injured were counted twice after being transferred from one hospital to another.

Among those injured, 202 remained in serious conditions, the department said,

The revised statistics show that among the injured, 485 are Taiwanese nationals, seven come from China (including four from Hong Kong and one from Macao), and six are from other countries.     [FULL  STORY]