The combination of an afternoon thunderstorm and a ruptured water pipe yesterday caused serious flooding at Terminal 2 of Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport for the second time in less than a month.
Taoyuan International Airport Corp, which runs the airport, said the pipe in the airport’s A13 MRT station in the basement of the terminal burst, leading to a cascade of water from the ceiling to the floor below.
Airport staff used sandbags to stem the flow of water and got to work to clear the water.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
However, unlike the earlier incident, the food court on the same floor was not affected, nor was the power and air-conditioning system.
After a thunderstorm warning was issued at 3:54pm, ground operations at the airport were temporarily suspended, delaying several flights, the company said.
Flooding was also reported in some areas of Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan after the storm.
The Central Weather Bureau said that its Pateh station in Taoyuan had recorded a maximum precipitation of 117 millimeters between 3:10 pm and 4:10pm.
The Taiwan Railways Administration also reported some disruptions cause by flooding, saying that water on the Taoyuan-Yingge (鶯歌) West Line rose above the rails, while trains running on the Sanjia (山佳)-Yingge East Line had to slow down to 5kph due to flooding.
As for the June 2 flooding incident at the airport, a Public Construction Commission investigation later determined that it had been caused by a blockage in one of the airport’s drain pipelines, which had prevented the rapid discharge of floodwater into the Pusin River (埔心溪).
The commission also found that a failure to promptly close a floodgate at an underpass leading to the basement of Terminal Two led to the building’s basement flooding.
The Taoyuan International Airport Corp said financial losses caused by the June 2 flooding was more than NT$50 million (US$1.54 million), including damage to facilities and compensation fort the delayed delivery of their luggage.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS