Four former top managers indicted over fatal 2022 fire at rice cracker plant

Niigata – Public prosecutors have indicted without arrest four people linked to rice cracker manufacturer Sanko Seika in Niigata Prefecture over a plant fire in 2022 that killed six of the company’s workers.

Indicted by the Niigata District Public Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday were former Sanko Seika CEO Motoyasu Sato, 56; former production headquarters chief Hirohisa Sato, 62; former production management division head Katsuyuki Tamagawa, 59; and Tomio Habe, 62, former manager of the firm’s Arakawa plant in the city of Murakami in the prefecture, the site of the deadly fire.

They face allegations of professional negligence resulting in death. The prosecutor’s office stopped short of disclosing whether the four had admitted the charges.

The indictment came as the office concluded that the four failed to take necessary measures even though similar fires had occurred at the plant and that their negligence led to the fatal blaze.

According to the indictment, the four former Sanko Seika officials, following the past fires, were aware of the possibility that scraps of rice crackers that contained oil and accumulated at the bottom of a dryer installed on an oven at the Arakawa plant may catch fire, but failed to take measures such as changing the layout of the dryer, removing the rice cracker scraps or informing workers of an evacuation route.

As a result, a fire broke out on Feb. 11, 2022, destroying the 8,800-square-meter plant and burning six plant workers from their 20s to 70s to death, the indictment said.

At the Arakawa plant, eight fires, including minor ones, occurred between 1988 and 2019, with rice cracker scraps believed to have caught fire in many of the cases, according to the Murakami Fire Department.

An investigation report from Sanko Seika, headquartered in the city of Niigata, has revealed that some of the victims did not undergo evacuation training and therefore were highly likely to be unaware of the location of an emergency exit at the plant.

In February 2024, papers on the four suspects over the fatal fire were sent to prosecutors. The following month, Motoyasu Sato resigned as CEO.