Relief operations for nuclear and biochemical incidents will be included in this year’s annual Han Kuang (漢光) military drills, a Ministry of National Defense official said yesterday.
Acting ministry spokesperson colonel Lo Shao-ho (羅紹和) made the comment at a press conference held to publicize this year’s Han Kuang military exercises.
Real-fire drills are slated to take place between April 11 and April 15, while computer-simulated war games will be held between July 18 and July 22, the ministry said.
The military said that it has started to meet with local governments officials as well as other ministries to map out comprehensive rescue and relief operations in the event that multiple disasters strike the nation.
Taiwan has three operational nuclear power plants, two located in New Taipei City (新北市) and one in Pingtung County. A fourth one in being built in New Taipei City.
As to whether the ministry has the wherewithal to handle nuclear incidents like the one in Japan, an official who wished to remain anonymous said that because of the large population and the small number of military bases in northern Taiwan, a lack of shelter and traffic could be a problem in the event of an emergency evacuation in response to a nuclear incident in the area.
Meanwhile, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) ordered the establishment of a group under the Executive Yuan’s Office of Disaster Management, with the remit of reassuring the public when unexpected disasters occur.
Wu made the remarks at an impromptu meeting held on Monday where he demanded government officials revise their original disaster prevention and relief plans for this year following the massive earthquake in Japan on Friday that triggered a tsunami and seriously damaged its nuclear plants.
Deputy chief of the Office of Disaster Management Huang Shao-ku (黃少古), said that disaster prevention exercises planned for New Taipei City and Pingtung County, where the nation’s nuclear power plants are located, would be expanded to incorporate reactions to nuclear power plant incidents caused by earthquakes.
The government should also establish an earthquake early warning system like the one in Japan, Vice Premier Sean Chen (陳?) said.
National Communication Commission Chairperson Su Herng (蘇蘅) said the agency would work with mobile phone operators to establish a network that automatically relays an earthquake warning over mobile phone networks.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater