Residents near Greater Kaohsiung’s Hansin Business District (漢神商區) yesterday criticized a construction company and local officials for what they described as “evading responsibility,” when collapsing ground damaged roads and buildings in their neighborhood on Sunday evening.
“We see these hazards keep happening, putting our lives and property at risk. Who would dare to live here in such conditions?” one resident asked at a mediation meeting held yesterday.
Others in attendance demanded that Shing Tzung Development Co, the contractor for a building project thought to be responsible for the cave-ins, and the local government fix the problems.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
The project in question is a 26-story high-rise at the intersection of Zhichiang 3rd Rd and Youth Road, near the Hanshin Department Store in downtown Kaohsiung.
Since work started last year, three serious accidents that endangered public safety have occurred. The latest came on Sunday, as the ground collapsed and roads buckled. A section of 25 houses were affected, with cracks appearing on walls and one entire building tilting to its side.
The Greater Kaohsiung Government evacuated 133 households in the neighborhood on Sunday night. However, the fractures on the buildings and on the road kept growing, as the tilted building continued to list, so a wider area was cordoned off yesterday.
The Greater Kaohsiung Government Building Administration called on licensed civil engineers to survey the neighborhood yesterday and to assess the various dangers.
At the mediation meeting, upset residents vented their anger at the contractor, saying that they did not see the company installing the promised structural reinforcements after a previous incident last month and that they were furious that the cave-ins keep happening.
Huang Chih-ming (黃志明), head of the administration, said actions have been taken, with the fire department pouring water around the construction site to saturate the ground and to balance the subsurface hydrostatic equilibrium.
“The construction company will use ground-penetrating radar to detect whether there are other loosened or collapsed pockets underground,” he said.
“Right now we have about 3,600 active construction sites in Kaohsiung. Shing Tzung is not the only company having problems. The government will shoulder the responsibility for monitoring safety at these worksites. Saving people’s lives is our No. 1 priority. Afterward, we will convene public hearings to listen to local residents,” he said.
Shing Tzung manager Chen Fu-chiang (陳富強) said his company would pay for one month of hotel accommodation for the evacuated residents to solve their urgent need for housing.
“Our company will take responsibility for the moving arrangements and accommodation for the residents. If the tilted building is in danger and no longer safe to live in, we will construct a new building on-site for residents. For other households, we will bear all the costs of repair and financial compensation, with the details to be negotiated later on,” Chen said.
As Typhoon Matmo looms, residents were worried about the collapse of their houses in case of heavy rain and flooding. The local government and the construction company said they have people on-site to monitor the situation closely.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: