The Taipei City Government completed a safety inspection of all hotels in the city built before 1975 yesterday and plans to spend NT$10 million (US$290,000) on subsidies for the hotels to improve their safety measures and fittings.
The city-wide inspection was conducted after a fire at the Paihsueh Hotel earlier this month killed seven people and left one person injured.
The 36-year-old hotel, located in Taipei’s Datong District (大同), was one of the 85 hotels in the city built before 1975.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the city government’s task force spent two weeks completing the safety inspection and would assist hotels that have violated regulations to improve their safety infrastructure.
Taipei’s Building Administration Office said about 20 hotels were found to have illegal structures or were lacking fire escapes.
The city government would encourage them to upgrade their safety facilities, including fire escapes, and improve their appearance and interior decoration, Hau said yesterday during an inspection of two municipal hotels.
Hau said the city government was in the process of drafting new regulations to enhance building safety rules. Construction regulations put in place in the 1960s only require hotels to have one emergency exit.
Older hotels, including the Paihsueh Hotel, followed the outdated construction regulations and that made it difficult for guests to escape, he said.
Hau urged hoteliers to cooperate with the government and enhance the safety of visitors.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai