Suggesting that sudden strong gusts of wind might have been behind the collapse of scaffolding at the Splendor Hotel (台中金典酒店) in Greater Taichung on Friday night, a Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) official yesterday said the true cause of the accident could not be ascertained until the completion of an investigation report, which is slated to be released tomorrow.
A large amount of scaffolding, which was erected along the facade of the five-star hotel for remodeling work, collapsed on Friday at 6:45pm. About 60 tonnes of scaffolding fell on both Jiansing Road and Taichung Harbor Road — the intersection on which the hotel is located — in the city’s West District (西區), injuring 12 people and damaging 22 vehicles.
Among the injured, a woman surnamed Tseng (曾), 45, was still in critical condition as of press time.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
Lin Chin-chi (林進基), the head of the labor inspection department at the council, said yesterday that inspection officials had examined the site and that an investigation report is scheduled to be released tomorrow.
Initial assessments suggested that a sudden strong gust of wind at that time might have been the cause of the collapse, he said.
Lin said the Splendor Hotel would shoulder the responsibility if the process of the remodeling work is found to not have met construction standards.
Taichung Deputy Mayor Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家旗) said the hotel had applied to remodel the bottom 10 floors of the hotel, adding that the Greater Taichung Government has since suspended construction work.
Yesterday morning, the city removed the collapsed scaffolding and traffic in the area could proceed as normal.
Splendor Hotel general manager Chen Yueh-feng (陳月鳳) said the hotel would take full responsibility and compensate all losses from the accident.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS