The recent subway disaster in Daegu, South Korea caused serious loss of life. Since the Taipei MRT system is gradually becoming part of the daily life of area residents, we have to ask what lessons we can learn from that fire.
Among natural and man-made disasters, fire is one disaster where loss of life and property can be minimized by a little hard work. All fire prevention work, however, includes two factors that are difficult to overcome and control, and both these conditions were present in the Daegu subway fire.
First, architectural designs have gone beyond what disaster prevention and relief can handle in terms of height and underground construction. Second, various kinds of dangerous substances are in widespread use and easy to acquire and carry around.
As far as architectural design goes, the Daegu fire occurred underground in a confined space. There were other disadvantages, such as a great number of people crammed into that space and a limited number of exits. These factors of course led to a manifold increase in the difficulties of the rescuers. Under such circumstances, fire rescuers have to give priority consideration to issues such as difficulty in lowering high temperatures and eliminating the thick smoke.
However, demanding that the MRT authorities rely on fire safety design to provide effective means for eliminating smoke and lowering temperatures prior to the occurrence of a disaster is preferable to relying on fire rescuers once a disaster is in progress.
Should a person get caught in this dangerous situation, they should immediately try to find all objects possibly containing fresh air, such as plastic bags, large backpacks or empty containers, and then stay low to the ground, doing everything possible to gain the time necessary to wait for rescuers to arrive.
When travelling by MRT, people should also take note of and familiarize themselves with where in the train car the fire extinguishers and emergency hammers are located, so that they can calmly handle an accident.
However, most fire-prevention equipment designs are aimed at dealing with accidental fires and are often useless against arson. In Daegu, one man with a container of flammable liquid was able to cause injury or death to hundreds of people. Such acts of violence are difficult to guard against.
Taiwan's small area and dense population has led to a development toward higher buildings and underground facilities. Chemical substances also abound on the market.
Some of the things that we have learned from the Daegu disaster are the importance of adopting a approach to arson prevention by uniting judicial, prosecutorial, police and fire-prevention agencies through technological integration, and by getting the insurance and fire-prevention industries to create an agency in charge of arson prevention as soon as possible. There should also be widespread and continuous public information campaigns about fire prevention, and escape and rescue in confined spaces.
Chen Chin-lien is professor and chair of the department of fire service administration and science at the Graduate School of Fire Science and Technology,Central Police University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS