For the second time in less than two decades, Greater Kaohsiung has suffered a tragedy apparently linked to its petrochemical industrial base. That the disaster came just eight days after the TransAsia Airways Flight GE222 crash on Penghu made it all the more devastating to many people around the nation.
A series of explosions and fires that began around midnight on Thursday devastated a large section of the city’s Cianjhen District (前鎮), leaving it looking like a war zone. Among the scores of dead and injured are several firefighters and police officers, as is too often the case in tragedies like this.
Some of the explosions were so powerful that they hurled cars onto three and four-story buildings, rocking the area as an earthquake would.
The tragedy was much deadlier than the 1997 explosion in Kaohsiung caused by a Chinese Petroleum Corp, Taiwan (CPC) team as they tried to unearth a section of gas pipeline as part of a road construction project. While the investigation into the cause of this week’s blasts has just begun, initial evidence points to ruptured pipelines from CPC, although both CPC and Formosa Petrochemical said their factories are operating normally.
Aging and decaying infrastructure is a problem that cities around the world struggle to address, and a municipality that has been expanding as fast as Kaohsiung has in recent years faces more problems than most. However, it is not the first — and is not likely to be the last — to suffer from gas explosions in its sewer system.
A downtown section of Guadalajara, Mexico, was rocked by a series of 10 explosions on April 22, 1992, that killed at least 250 people and injured hundreds more. An investigation later found that a corroded gasoline pipe had leaked fuel into the city’s sewer system.
The central government responded quickly to the disaster, dispatching hundreds of soldiers early yesterday morning to help with search-and-rescue efforts. Firefighters from nearby Pingtung County and Greater Tainan also poured into the city to aid their local counterparts. However, the central government must move just as quickly to offer help in rebuilding the scores of damaged roads and other infrastructural elements, just as it would if the cause of the destruction had been a typhoon or earthquake.
Greater Kaohsiung faces a huge clean-up task, but it can depend on the rest of the nation to pitch in with help, as governments, the private sector and the public did after Typhoon Morakot in 2009.
The focus of the nation today is on its second-biggest city and the response has been gratifyingly rapid. Tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars have already been donated by Taiwanese companies both big and small, as well as by many individuals. The Taipei City Government set up a postal account to help residents who want to donate to their southern neighbors.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) also deserves some praise for quickly canceling today’s Dadaocheng Fireworks Festival to mark Lovers’ Day. The annual festival at Dadaocheng Wharf draws hundreds of thousands of people and is a major event on the city’s calendar. While its cancelation will be a loss to local businesses in the area and will disappoint fireworks fans, partying with explosives as Kaohsiung is still reeling would not be right.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) pledged tough measures to prevent a recurrence of this week’s incident after speaking with Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) yesterday. Only time will tell if such a pledge will be more than sympathetic words aimed at a cynical public, since a similar vow was made by the then-central government after the 1997 accident.
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