Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) at 4:20pm yesterday announced that the search-and-rescue operation at the Weiguan Jinlong complex in Tainan, which collapsed in an earthquake on Feb. 6, has come to an end, after the body of the last missing resident was found.
According to Central Emergency Operations Center statistics, the death toll from the magnitude 6.4 earthquake yesterday rose to a total of 116, of which 114 occurred at the Weiguan Jinlong complex, with one person who lived near the complex still missing.
The last body, which was recovered at 3:57pm yesterday, was the building’s management committee chairman, Hsieh Chen-Yu (謝鎮宇), who lived in building G, Lai said.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
Tainan Deputy Mayor Tseng Hsu-cheng (曾旭正) said the only person still missing after the earthquake is a woman surnamed Lin (林), who lived near the Weiguan Jinlong complex and had a habit of going out to exercise early every morning. Lin’s family has been unable to contact her since the earthquake.
The use of heavy equipment to break up and clear away rubble from the site was authorized in the hope of rescuing everyone as soon as possible, Lai said, adding that experience gained from the recovery work could be used as a reference by the National Fire Administration when considering rescue procedures in the future.
If rescue workers can use heavy equipment to retrieve bodies intact from the rubble, it means that such equipment could also be used to accelerate the search for survivors in sections that search-and-rescue personnel would not be able to reach by themselves, he said.
Even though heavy equipment was ready for use 36 hours after the earthquake, authorities were required to follow regulations and could only allow their use 62 hours after the event, which created a dilemma, Lai said.
The Construction and Planning Administration said it would expand a two-year-old-building examination project, increasing the number of buildings that are to receive subsidies of NT$8,000 for surveys and improvements this year from 500 to 2,000.
Priority is to be given to buildings in the six special municipalities and southern counties, with an emphasis to be placed on ensuring the structural safety of buildings, the administration said, adding that applications for the subsidy might begin as soon as next month.
The project, which is to examine the ability of private buildings to resist earthquakes and provide a subsidy for improvement measures, was planned in July last year, administration Director Hsu Wen-lung (許文龍) said, adding that because of the earthquake, the agency has decided to expand its scale to 2,000 buildings.
Preliminary evaluations are to include checking for cracks on buildings’ beams and pillars and peeling on exterior walls, Hsu said.
Due to southern residents’ concerns about the structural safety of buildings they live in after the earthquake, the administration is to subsidize buildings in southern Taiwan first, he added.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS