The government should reinforce the nation’s broadband seismic network to improve its disaster monitoring and early warning system, a local earth sciences researcher said yesterday, adding that he had discovered that the network could be used to monitor landslides and mudflows.
Lin Cheng-horng (林正洪), deputy director of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Earth Sciences, made the statement in a report on the use of the seismic network.
Lin said that an analysis of the data from the seismic network when Typhoon Morakot struck in early August revealed that huge landslides and debris flows could cause seismic waves.
For example, the energy released by strong ground motions during the massive mudslides that destroyed the village of Siaolin (小林) in Kaohsiung County in August was equivalent to that released by an earthquake measuring 4.6 on the Richter scale, Lin said.
Seismic waves from an earthquake of this magnitude can be recorded as far away as Hokkaido in Japan, he said.
Disaster observation data showed that at least 45 large-scale landslides and debris flows occurred within 24 hours after Typhoon Morakot hit on Aug. 8, Lin said.
The big difference between ground motion triggered by landslides and earthquakes lay in the vibration frequencies, he said.
The frequency of landslide-induced ground motion would be one per 20 seconds, while that from earthquakes would be around five vibrations per second, he added.
Strong ground vibrations caused by landslides or debris and mudflows could trigger other factors, creating a chain effect capable of bringing even worse disasters, Lin said.
Lin said Typhoon Morakot showed that the existing monitoring system was not enough to provide early disaster warning because it could only monitor landslides and floods but could not gather information on other phenomema such as the formation of barrier lakes.
He urged the government to set up a multifunctional early warning system by making use of radar detectors and satellite equipment and expanding the broadband seismic network to warn the public about disasters.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,