日本新潟县公诉官日曰对四名与三笘精华米果公司相关人员提起公诉，这些人与该公司2022年发生的工厂火灾有关，该起火灾导致六名公司员工遇难。
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.
被新潟地方法院公诉官办公室起诉的四人是：前三笘精华米果公司董事长佐藤元康（56岁）、前生产总部负责人佐藤博久（62岁）、前生产管理部负责人玉川胜之（59岁），以及62岁的羾富男，他曾担任该公司位于新潟县村上市的荒川工厂的经理，该工厂正是发生致命火灾的地点。
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.
他们被指控犯有因过失导致死亡罪。公诉官办公室并未透露这四人是否承认了这些指控。
They face allegations of professional negligence resulting in death. The prosecutor’s office stopped short of disclosing whether the four had admitted the charges.
这起起诉决定在公诉官办公室认定的情况下作出，即这四人尽管过去工厂曾发生类似火灾，但仍未采取必要措施，其过失直接导致了这场致命大火的发生。
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.
据起诉书显示，四名前三笘精华米果公司官员在过去的火灾之后，已清楚知道沉积在荒川工厂烘干机底部的含油米果碎屑可能会着火，但他们并未采取诸如改动烘干机布局、清除米果碎屑或告知员工疏散路线等措施。
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.
因此，2022年2月11日，一场火灾爆发，摧毁了占地8800平方米的工厂，并导致六名年龄在20多岁到70多岁的工厂员工遇难，起诉书称。
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.
据村上消防部门介绍，自1988年至2019年间，荒川工厂发生了八次火灾，包括一些较小的火灾，其中许多情况下都有米果碎屑着火的可能性。
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.
总部位于新潟市的三笘精华米果公司的一份调查报告显示，有些遇难者从未接受过疏散训练，因此极有可能不知道工厂的应急出口位置。
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.
2024年2月，关于这起致命火灾的四名嫌疑人的卷件已移交给检察官。次月，佐藤基康辞去了CEO职位。
In February 2024, papers on the four suspects over the fatal fire were sent to prosecutors. The following month, Motoyasu Sato resigned as CEO.