The massive series of gas explosions that occurred from late Thursday night to early Friday morning in Greater Kaohsiung, claiming at least 28 lives and injuring 286 people, while at least two people remain missing, exposed fatal flaws that should have been addressed to avoid such a tragedy.
A top concern is underground urban planning, an issue that has hardly been discussed despite explosions from a gas leak in Kaohsiung having occurred in 1997.
Following the most recent explosions, environmental groups have renewed appeals for public disclosure of location data, maps and maintenance records of pipelines that transport gas and hazardous liquids to allow for condition assessment and mitigation planning, but such information might not be available.
Many of today’s pipelines in Kaohsiung, one of the nation’s centers of petrochemical production, have been in operation since the 1970s or earlier and are in continual need of maintenance, repair or replacement.
According to the Public Work Bureau of the Kaohsiung City Government, its pipeline database system, which was not set up until 2000, does not include aging pipelines which might have issues concerning corrosion, welds and shape deformity, so it might have been unaware of the necessity to regularly inspect the conditions of the older pipelines.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs responded to pipeline safety concerns by saying it is planning to establish a platform of coordination involving labor inspection authorities, environmental protection units, construction agencies and fire departments in both central and local governments. That platform, the ministry said, would inspect all pipelines in Kaohsiung within four months, and require pipeline operators to repair or replace pipelines whenever needed to ensure complete operational integrity of the pipelines, before it moves to other petrochemical production bases in Taoyuan County and Yunlin County.
It was a positive response to the public outcry for information about pipeline conditions, although whether it is just paying lip service to the idea remains to be seen. Meanwhile, it highlights the problem that there has been no specialized agency responsible for the oversight of pipeline safety, which allows pipeline owners to exploit the lax regulations and bypass costly projects to improve pipeline integrity.
It appears that the events leading up to the explosions could have been handled more efficiently. Many residents said that the first explosion came about three hours after a strong smell of gas was detected. According to the city government’s Environmental Protection Bureau, it detected 13,520ppm (parts per million) of propene, the suspected cause of the explosion, on the scene at 10:19pm, 80 minutes before the first explosion. It said that the density of the substance in the atmosphere was far above the level of 68ppm that can be easily detected by smell.
During post-incident examinations of gas monitoring data, inspectors have found that abnormalities in a pipeline were detected between 8pm and 9pm on Thursday night.
What were the actions taken during this period to reduce leakage, except for having firefighters dispense water? Why could exact locations of gas leakage not be identified? Were the inspectors equipped with sufficiently sophisticated devices? Did the situation warrant an evacuation of the residents?
As a city develops, it faces issues of urban renewal and underground urban planning, especially when it has a labyrinth of pipes beneath it like Greater Kaohsiung does. If the pressing issues about subterranean development remain unaddressed, a gas explosion like this one might as well be called a failure of governance rather than just an accident.
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
Reports about Elon Musk planning his own semiconductor fab have sparked anxiety, with some warning that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) could lose key customers to vertical integration. A closer reading suggests a more measured conclusion: Musk is advancing a strategic vision of in-house chip manufacturing, but remains far from replacing the existing foundry ecosystem. For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited; the medium-term challenge lies in supply diversification and pricing pressure, only in the long term could it evolve into a structural threat. The clearest signal is Musk’s announcement that Tesla and SpaceX plan to develop a fab project dubbed “Terafab”
Most schoolchildren learn that the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000km. They do not learn that the global economy depends on just 160 of those kilometers. Blocking two narrow waterways — the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait — could send the economy back in time, if not to the Stone Age that US President Donald Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran back to, then at least to the mid-20th century, before the Rolling Stones first hit the airwaves. Over the past month and a half, Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz, which is about 39km wide at
The ongoing Middle East crisis has reinforced an uncomfortable truth for Taiwan: In an increasingly interconnected and volatile world, distant wars rarely remain distant. What began as a regional confrontation between the US, Israel and Iran has evolved into a strategic shock wave reverberating far beyond the Persian Gulf. For Taiwan, the consequences are immediate, material and deeply unsettling. From Taipei’s perspective, the conflict has exposed two vulnerabilities — Taiwan’s dependence on imported energy and the risks created when Washington’s military attention is diverted. Together, they offer a preview of the pressures Taiwan might increasingly face in an era of overlapping geopolitical
RSS