Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Motivated by the Daegu subway fire, the Taipei City Government will hold an MRT fire drill in the near future, the city government said yesterday without specifying an exact date.
Taipei City Deputy Mayor Ou Chin-der (
Ou said the officials of these departments will later make an inspection trip to Daegu to collect comprehensive information about the fire and conduct a fire drill in Taipei based on a potential catastrophe even greater than the Daegu subway fire.
Mayor Ma yesterday also made a report to the Executive Yuan in a routine meeting regarding the disaster prevention measures in the Taipei MRT.
"All the MRT carriages are made from fireproof material, and the forthcoming new carriages that the city government is going to purchase will also meet such standards," Ma said.
"Once the electricity of the MRT trains is cut off, an auxillairy power supply will operate of the trains for 30 minutes, and during this period of time, the doors of the carriages can be opened from the inside and the outside to allow the passengers to be evacuated quickly," Ma said, alluding to the carriages' locked doors in the South Korean subway fire which were a major contributing factor to the heavy loss of life.
"The TRTC is capable of evacuating all the passengers in a carriage in six minutes and all the passengers in an MRT station in 30 minutes should fire break out," Ma said.
As to whether the city government will exclude a South Korea company from participating in the bidding for the purchase of a total of 230 MRT carriages to be used on the the Luchou and Hsinchuang MRT lines now under construction, Ma said the city government has not ruled out the company's joining the bidding.
"If the South Korean contractor can meet the required safety standards and qualifications, it is allowed to join the bidding," Ma said.
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