As efforts continue to search the rubble of the collapsed Weiguan Jinlong complex in Tainan’s Yongkang District (永康) following Saturday’s magnitude 6.4 earthquake, stories of personal sacrifices by rescue workers from across the nation have started to surface, including some who gave up far more than their Lunar New Year holiday in the race to save lives.
Chiayi City special rescue squad captain Hsu Shao-tang (徐紹唐) directed rescue efforts on Saturday and Sunday, even though his father was hospitalized. He only left the disaster site on Monday to see his father after the hospital contacted him to say his father was in critical condition.
Hsu’s father passed away on Tuesday, and Hsu said that he would rejoin the search and rescue efforts after he puts his father’s affairs in order.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA
A soldier named Ma Ping-han (馬秉涵) was also among those working on the Weiguan Jinlong site, even though his own family’s home in Tainan also collapsed during the quake.
A post yesterday on the “Ministry of National Defense spokesman” Facebook page said Ma rushed home after learning about the loss of his family’s home, but stayed only half a day to get his family resettled before rushing back to camp to volunteer to rejoin the ranks of rescue personnel.
A firefighter from Keelung named Wu Hsin-hsien (吳信憲) also put the call of duty before family time, joining rescue efforts on Tuesday — just five days after he got married.
Some rescuers have continued to work despite being injured, including Cheng Jung-kuei (鄭榮貴), deputy captain of the Chiayi volunteer special rescue brigade.
Cheng was operating an excavator at noon yesterday when the excavator’s arm caught on a steel bar, which sprang back and hurtled toward him, puncturing a thigh. He only went to the hospital after realizing that blood from the wound had spread through his trousers.
Lee Yuan-lung (李元龍), a squad captain from New Taipei City’s special search brigade, said on Facebook that he sprained an ankle after his foot got caught in electrical wiring during a search on Saturday.
Lee said that he taped up the ankle, took some anti-inflammatory medication and muscle relaxants, and returned to the rescue effort.
It was not until he returned home on Tuesday after his crew was rotated out that he unwrapped the ankle and discovered it was severely swollen and bruised.
“On site, we do not think about too much else, we just focus only on how to get the rescue mission done. Only when the job is done do we think about our injuries,” Lee wrote.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods