The Taipei City Government has approved the resumption of construction on Taipei 101 -- formerly known as the Taipei Financial Center -- over three months after a powerful earthquake detached two tower cranes from their mounts, causing them to hurtle to the ground killing five people.
The Bureau of Labor Affairs and the Public Works Department of the city government issued the notice, permitting full resumption of construction on all floors on June 28 and July 3, respectively.
PHOTO: TAIPEI 101
Permission to resume building on floors from B5 to 23 was granted on May 15, although building restrictions have reportedly cost the company NT$800 million, which are expenses related to workers' wages, insurance premiums and other costs associated with keeping the project going. The figure does not include the cost of reparing the damage caused by the quake.
Construction was halted on March 31 when the earthquake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, sent the two cranes perched on the 56th floor plummeting to earth.
According to Terry Shen (沈雲飛), vice president of the tower's builder -- the Taipei Financial Center Corp (台北金融大樓公司) -- two new cranes are being built in a joint venture between Japan's Nippon Steel and Taiwan's China Steel Corp (中鋼).
The new cranes, which will replace toppled cranes No. 2 and No. 4, will have specially reinforced masts that will be able to withstand strong quakes like the one on March 31, Shen said.
Shen said that the new cranes will have special pin-strengthened masts which are the same as those used in cranes in No. 1 and No. 3 -- which stayed in position during the earthquake.
"The pin-system is much stronger, as was seen during the quake when the other cranes didn't fall," Shen said.
The differences between the four cranes don't stop there. Cranes No. 1 and No. 3 were virtually custom-made for use on the project, while cranes No. 2 and No. 4 had already been used previously in Hong Kong, Shen said.
"The parts and elements are expected to arrive in mid-August and installation will begin in September. There will therefore be no significant progress on the steel structure above the 56th floor until September," according to a company statement.
The city government is currently examining reports submitted by Taipei Financial's main contractor, KTRT, on what caused the crane masts to fail during the temblor. KTRT is formed by Kumagai Gumi, Taiwan Kumagai, RSEA Engineering Corporation (
The report also includes a study of the accident and the safety of the building structure by the Taipei Structural Engineers Association and of tower crane enhancement, conducted by National Taiwan University's Center of Earthquake Engineering Research (CEER).
No decision has been made on whether professional misconduct or criminal negligence were factors in the tragedy.
Taipei 101 is scheduled for completion by 2004.
The biggest single shareholder in what is to be world's tallest building is China United Trust & Investment Corp (中聯信託) -- which has a 20 percent stake. The next leading shareholder is the China Development Industrial Bank (中華開發銀行). The most important anchor tenant of the facility will be the Taiwan Stock Exchange (證交所), which will occupy about seven floors in the building, or about 6,000 pings.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
In the wake of strong global demand for AI applications, Taiwan’s export-oriented economy accelerated with the composite index of economic indicators flashing the first “red” light in December for one year, indicating the economy is in booming mode, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Moreover, the index of leading indicators, which gauges the potential state of the economy over the next six months, also moved higher in December amid growing optimism over the outlook, the NDC said. In December, the index of economic indicators rose one point from a month earlier to 38, at the lower end of the “red” light.
RSS