For the second time in just over two months, residents of Siaolin Village (小林), among others, have been left fuming in the wake of a government-sanctioned report on the destruction of their village in August last year because they didn’t like the results of the investigation. On Wednesday, a team of geologists commissioned by the National Science Council (NSC) said that the tens of millions of tonnes of mud that buried the village during Typhoon Morakot was the result of Mount Siandu’s (獻肚山) unstable geological composition, compounded by the heavy rainfall brought by the typhoon. The scientists said they could not rule out that the explosives used to construct a water diversion tunnel had contributed to the collapse because they hadn’t investigated the issue since a Public Construction Commission (PCC) report released on Feb. 1 had concluded that the demolitions had not been a contributing factor. The PCC report noted that 1,856mm of rain fell in 72 hours in Siaolin, 156mm more than the area could theoretically withstand.
Siaolin survivors, environmentalists and many others have blamed the mudslides on the tunnel project. Tainan County Council Speaker Wu Chien-pao (吳健保) said on Aug. 21 last year that residents had opposed the project from the very beginning because of fears that blasting could leave the surrounding area unstable. The Water Resources Agency, however, has vehemently defended the project, despite it being fined for failing to obtain permission for part of the work.
The day of the release of the NSC report also saw the Green Party Taiwan issue a warning over a threat to mountainous areas in Nantou County from overdevelopment and excessive logging by tea farmers and property developers in areas near the Jhuoshe Forest Trail (卓社林道) and the catchment area of the Sun Moon Lake Reservoir. The party said that Nantou risked becoming “the next Siaolin.”
Taiwan has had more than its share of disasters, many of which have been a fatal combination of the forces of nature and human error, such as the 1997 Lincoln Mansions tragedy that killed 28 people and the collapse of schools and other low-level buildings during the 921 Earthquake, which killed more than 2,400 people.
We may never know for sure exactly what triggered the Siaolin mudslides — at least to everybody’s satisfaction — but we do know that Taiwan’s unique topography has left it vulnerable to a host of natural disasters, from its location in Typhoon Alley to the tectonic effects (ie, earthquakes) of its location along the edge of the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates. This uniqueness led David Petley, a Durham University professor — on this very page in August last year — to hail Taiwan’s “almost mythical status” among landslide researchers because of its “extraordinary natural susceptibility to landslides and debris flows.”
He urged Taiwan to, among other steps, create a national disaster management agency to coordinate both disaster risk reduction and disaster response, implement a comprehensive national plan for managing slopes, expand research into the natural processes that create hazards in mountainous areas and ensure that the research results are included in the planning and management process. These are all long-term efforts that could take years to pay off. They run counter to the “firefighting” mode of crisis management that has long been the hallmark of Taiwan’s government, as well as the quick-fix mentality of politicians and the tourism-development agendas of many local governments and businesses.
The search for answers to the Siaolin and other disasters should not delay efforts to improve disaster prevention and response as well as environmental management capabilities on both national and local level. Nor should we allow turf battles between government agencies, political ambitions, special-interest groups or the rallying cry of “economic development” to stand in the way.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US