Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said he would apologize if it was found that the installation of pipelines that caused a series of explosions in Greater Kaohsiung last week preceded a suspicious culvert constructed during his tenure as the city’s mayor.
The catastrophic explosions that occurred late on July 31 in the municipality have been attributed to leaks in a pipeline that was carrying propene.
The pipeline was first said to have been installed in a culvert that it should not have passed through, and LCY Chemical Corp (李長榮化工), the pipeline’s suspected owner, was accused of illegally installing it.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Two other companies, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and China Petrochemical Development Corp (中石化), also have pipelines running through the culvert.
It has been suggested that the leak leading to the explosion could have been caused by corrosion to pipes from water in the culvert.
As it was later found that the culvert itself was off the grid, questions are being asked about who is responsible for building the culvert and whether it was constructed before the pipelines were installed.
If the pipelines were installed after the culvert was constructed, it is suggested that the agency or building company that approved and supervised the installation of the culvert should be held responsible for the explosions.
Greater Kaohsiung Deputy Mayor Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀), whose resignation was approved yesterday, was the head of the design section of the Public Works Bureau’s Hydraulic Engineering Office which approved the culvert’s construction in November 1991. The culvert was completed in October 1992.
The pipelines found in the culvert were installed in April 1991.
Vice President Wu Den-yih was Kaohsiung City mayor from 1990 to 1998.
The vice president said yesterday that if the local government is to blame for the mistake, “I would have to apologize as the then-mayor. To be honest, there was still a public works bureau director and a sewage system office chief under me, but I certainly feel unsettled as the mayor [at the time] who led and coordinated the municipal administration.”
“It would be left to the prosecutors to find out which was established first, the culvert or the pipelines. If it was the pipeline owners who made the holes through the culvert, the city government’s sewage system office would be off the hook,” he said.
However, “if there was responsibility to be held [on the government’s part], it would be the lack of inspection [of pipelines] in the past years,” he added.
Prosecutors confirmed yesterday that the construction contractor had failed to follow a building plan for the culvert, which resulted in the culvert passing through where pipelines had been installed, but the mistake was not duly corrected.
The then-sewage system office is suspected of forging documents, seeking to gain illegal benefits from a function under its supervision, but since the alleged offenses were committed more than 20 years ago, officials cannot be charged, prosecutors said.
However, as the explosions, which led to fatalities and injuries, were caused by failed supervision and inspection of the construction, the officials could be prosecuted for causing death by negligence and causing a catastrophe by neglecting their duties, as the limitation period for these offenses has not yet passed.
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