An early morning fire engulfed the 36-year-old Paihsueh Hotel (白雪大旅社) in Taipei City’s Datong District (大同) yesterday, killing seven people and injuring one. It was the city’s deadliest fire in 15 years.
Police said they found a flammable container at the scene but were still investigating the cause.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) ordered a fire and police department task force to investigate the blaze and warned that if arson was found to be the cause, the perpetrators would be severely punished.
He also asked the Fire Department and Urban Planning Commission to establish a task force to examine the fire escape equipment at all old hotels.
Fire Department Commissioner Hsiung Kuang-hua (熊光華) said the fire was reported at 2:42am. Twenty-fire trucks, 103 firefighters and 13 ambulances were dispatched to the scene and the fire was brought under control at 3:11am.
Firefighters rescued three people from the four-story building. Two were later pronounced dead at a local hospital. One man broke both his legs jumping from the second floor and was hospitalized.
Five bodies were later found during a search of the burned-out building, two in the stairwell between the second and third story and three women in a bathroom.
A police officer said the trio in a bathroom were Malaysians who had arrived in Taiwan last Monday and were due to return home on Thursday. They were identified as Chin Seok Liang, 26, Lee Loo Yee, 37 and Low Mee Sim, age unknown.
The other four fatalities, all men, were identified as Chen Hsi-huang (陳錫煌), Lin Chih-chung (林治中), Fang I-wei (方藝偉) and Ting Wen-yung (丁文湧). Ting, 82, was a visually impaired retired soldier living at the hotel.
Hau said the city would pay a NT$200,000 grief subsidy for victims who were Taipei residents, and NT$20,000 for non-residents.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
RSS