Tuesday night’s earthquake has damaged 53 schools at an estimated cost of more than NT$15 million (US$512,470), the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
Of the 53 schools, 23 are in Hualien County and seven are in Kaohsiung, while four each were damaged in Miaoli County, Taipei and Tainan, Department of Student Affairs and Special Education official Chen Tsung-chih (陳宗志) said.
Hualien County’s Mingyi Elementary School suffered the most severe damage, estimated at NT$7 million, Chen said.
Photo: CNA
The earthquake has left the school with torn water pipes, cracked ditches, broken tiles and a malfunctioning overhead door, the Hualien County Department of Education said.
Hualien County’s Beichang Elementary School, where the ministry estimates losses to total NT$3 million, has fissured pillars and deep cracks in the building’s expansion joints, the department said.
The loss for schools in Hualien County — estimated at NT$13 million — is the highest, followed by Kaohsiung at NT$1.4 million and Hsinchu at NT$180,000, Chen said.
So far, only one student has been confirmed injured, the ministry said, adding that the Huagang Junior High School student in Hualien County scraped their left leg, but has received medical treatment and returned home at 2am yesterday.
Students at elementary, junior and senior-high schools across Taiwan are on winter break. The new semester is scheduled to begin on Feb. 21.
Meanwhile, 70 cellphone base stations were damaged, of which 24 had been repaired as of press time last night, the National Communications Commission said.
The damaged base stations belong to five major telecom carriers, with a majority owned by Taiwan Mobile, Far EasTone Telecommunications and Chunghwa Telecom, commission spokesperson Weng Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said.
Most of the base stations went offline because of power outages, Weng said, adding that they can be repaired after the power supply is restored.
In addition to telecom signals, 732 households in Hualien reported cable TV disruptions, Weng said, adding that the cable system operator was told to repair it as soon as possible.
The nation’s emergency alert system functioned well on Tuesday night, as many people reported that their cellphones sounded an alarm as the earthquake hit, the commission said.
According to the commission, the earthquake happened at 11:50pm on Tuesday. The Central Weather Bureau sent a presidential alert to the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction’s warning system at 11:51:02.505pm, which was disseminated by telecom carriers at 11:51:03.041pm.
On average, it took 4G telecom service users about five seconds to receive the alert, whereas 3G users received the message after about 10 seconds, the commission said.
Additional reporting by CNA
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
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
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