The Taipei City Government has dragged its feet in addressing school buildings that are structurally unsound, Taipei city councilors Chien Shu-pei (簡舒培) and Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
“The city’s Department of Education has done nothing about many school buildings that meet demolition criteria,” Wu said.
She said that Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School’s Ziqiang building is an example of the department’s alleged massaging of dangerous building figures.
Wu said the department had not included the building on its public list of dangerous buildings marked for demolition, even though an internal investigation had found it to be a “sea-sand building.”
“Sea-sand buildings” are structures whose concrete contains cheap, ocean-sourced sand.
Salt in the sand leads to the rapid corrosion of steel used in construction, increasing the risk of building collapse during earthquakes.
“Because [the Ziqiang buildings’ structural weakness] can not be seen with the naked eye, the department has pretended it does not exist,” Wu said, adding that based on the department’s internal investigation, there are at least six other school buildings across the city that have not been placed on the list of “dangerous buildings.”
She criticized previous city administrations for dragging their feet in addressing the issue, adding that a comprehensive review of school building safety had taken eight years to complete.
Department engineering head Hsu Chiao-hua (許巧華) said the buildings met safety standards that were in place when they were constructed, but needed to be strengthened to meet heightened standards adopted in 1997.
Hsu said they were not “sea-sand” buildings.
She said that work on buildings to help them meet the new standards has dragged out because investigation and strengthening can take place only during summer breaks, and also because of the sheer number of buildings involved.
Department figures show that at least 785 of the city’s 1357 buildings failed to meet the new standards, with 123 still requiring strengthening measures.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling
RSS