The Ministry of Education has instructed schools at all levels to carry out disaster drills before the end of June as part of the government’s effort to improve disaster preparedness, Minister of Education Wu Ching-ji (吳清基) said on Thursday.
The drills will be one of the criteria used to evaluate schools’ performance, Wu said after a meeting called by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Thursday in response to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
The ministry also instructed schools located near nuclear power plants in New Taipei City (新北市) and Pingtung County to conduct regular nuclear disaster drills to raise awareness about the potential for a nuclear accident, he said.
Photo: CNA
Wu said current regulations require that schools be built to withstand earthquakes measuring up to a magnitude 6, but the standard would be raised to a magnitude 7 — the highest level on the Central Weather Bureau’s scale — to guard against schools collapsing in the event of a powerful earthquake.
Deputy Minister of Education Chen Yi-hsing (陳益興) said emergency protective measures would be initiated at all schools if radioactive contaminants from Japan’s recent nuclear accident began to affect Taiwan.
These measures would include suspending all outdoor activities, closing windows tightly, wearing raincoats, rain gear and masks, and refraining from consuming water and food that had been exposed to the air, Chen said.
Separately, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said that architects and building structure experts would be invited to study how strong an earthquake would need to be in order to knock down the Presidential Office, which was constructed in 1919.
The biggest earthquake to strike Taiwan was the magnitude 7.6 temblor that ravaged central Taiwan in 1999.
He said he did not know whether the Japanese-built building would be able to resist a quake bigger than that.
The premier added that he would launch a comprehensive review into the quake-resistance level of other major buildings around the country.
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