The Taipei City Government yesterday launched a joint announcement mechanism on work and class cancelation with New Taipei City (新北市) and Keelung as Typhoon Saola approached, and announced that work and school would be canceled today.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) presided over two emergency operations meetings — one in the morning and again at 8pm — making announcements that the city canceled work and class as of 6pm last night and all of today.
The announcement also applied to New Taipei City and Keelung, as the three municipalities set up a joint announcement mechanism last month for the convenience of residents in the three cities.
“The decision on work and school cancellation is made upon the estimation of accumulated rainfall and wind, and the joint announcement mechanism will ensure that the announcement is made early enough, so that residents can be informed and prepared,” Hau said while presiding over one of the meetings at Taipei City Emergency Operations Center.
The Taipei City Government came under fire in June for its poor emergency response system to torrential rain as it announced work and class cancelations at the last minute, angering many parents who were forced to rush to schools to pick up their children.
The city is monitoring the accumulated torrential rainfall especially in Wenshan (文山), Nangang (南港), Shilin (士林), Beitou (北投) and Neihu (內湖) districts where flooding may occur.
Hau also inspected the city’s pumping stations, in the wake of an error at a station that led to serious flooding in Wenshan District in June.
Taipei City’s Department of New Construction was also monitoring the situation in older communities and hillside homes to prevent torrential rain, which is estimated to reach 1,200mm by tomorrow, from causing serious flooding in the mountain areas.
Taipei City’s 24-hour 1999 Citizen Hotline was jammed by residents who were concerned about the rain or seeking information about work and class cancelations. According to the city’s Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission, more than 6,742 calls were made to the hotline yesterday.
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