Blaze prompts calls for change

Taipei City Councilor Wang Po-yu (王博昱) yesterday called upon the Taipei Fire Department to review current firefighting methods and to ensure that its equipment is up to date.

He also asked the city government to amend legislation to make fire insurance mandatory in public places.

Meanwhile, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) instructed the fire department to study the possibility of drawing up stricter safety standards for parking towers.

He also asked the Rules and Regulations Commission (法規會) to review the city's current parking regulations, and to study the possibility of upgrading their legal status in a bid to ensure the rights of vehicle owners.

The calls were made in the wake of a fire that broke out on Saturday in the Tungkao Parking Tower (東高立體停車場) in downtown Taipei.

The tower is a 24-hour private facility located behind the SOGO department store at the intersection of Chunghsiao East Road and Tunhua South Road.

Although nobody was injured in the blaze, around 60 cars were destroyed in the city's first major parking tower incident.

According to Huang Chen-shou (黃振壽), the tower's manager, the fire appeared to have started on the top floor of the building and was probably ignited by a mechanical failure.

The police however, have not finalized their investigations.

Inspecting a privately-owned public parking tower on Chungching North Road and a municipal parking tower on Pateh Road yesterday, Wang said Saturday's blaze raised serious questions.

"First, I'm very curious to know why it took the fire department four hours to extinguish the blaze. How long would it take if there were a bigger fire? The director himself should seriously review the rescue efforts or consider stepping down," Wang said.

Second, firefighters should be constantly developing their firefighting knowledge and skills, he said. "There are different kinds of fires and many ways to extinguish them," he said.

"Take Saturday's blaze. The firefighters should have worked together with the tower manager to close down the exits and entrances of the unmanned, airtight tower to help the tower's carbon dioxide fire extinguishing system work more effectively. Instead, they simply doused the fire with water," he said.

Wang then called upon the city government to make fire insurance mandatory in public places.

"Where do you expect the car owners to turn when something ... like this happens and the facility is not insured and the owner is nowhere to be found?" he said.

The facility's owner, Lee Mou-tsung (李謀宗), who was not located until hours after the fire broke out, said he did not know whether the tower was still insured since the company's insurance affairs had been handled by his former business partner, who is no longer with the company.