An emergency drill should be held each month from next month to May on the Suhua Highway to ensure a high level of disaster preparedness, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday during a bus trip on the problematic stretch of road.
As the rainy season approaches, Ma said, information about the drills should also be made available online so the public can become familiar with the highway’s road conditions and be better prepared in the event of a natural disaster.
Upgrading the highway began late last month after 26 people were killed there by landslides during Typhoon Megi in October.
In a briefing to Ma, the head of the Directorate-General of Highways (DGH), Wu Meng-fen (吳盟分), said the DGH would erect another four changeable message signs along the highway by the end of April to provide real-time traffic information.
Wu added that the DGH planned to install 35 additional closed-circuit television cameras and designate 21 emergency shelters to enhance evacuation capability on the highway.
Meanwhile, on the second day of a hiking activity organized by Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) to promote tourism along the highway, Fu joined the briefing and asked the president to help give Hualien more exposure by promoting the county to international media.
Fu also urged the government to keep gravel trucks off the road as the vehicles could damage the highway’s foundations, some sections of which are built on geologically unstable land.
In response, Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), who was also on the tour along with Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), said his ministry would enhance rail and sea transportation in eastern Taiwan to help transport gravel.
Mao said the measure, expected to take effect on July 1, would reduce the volume of traffic by at least 70 percent on sections of the highway south of Heren (和仁), a major mining area, by 2013.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching