Response teams from several government agencies yesterday worked on coordination efforts in a rehearsal for the country's largest-ever cross-departmental chemical-attack drill to be held tomorrow in Taipei.
The rehearsal took place at the Hsiao-Nanmen stop of Taipei's mass rapid transit (MRT) system in a downtown district near the Presidential Office, the Ministry of National Defense and other government offices.
It simulated an emergency response to a sarin gas attack in an MRT car in which 45 passengers acted as victims. It was the second rehearsal for tomorrow's chemical-attack drill that is to be held at the same site. An earlier rehearsal was held last Friday.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
With the two rehearsals, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), which played a leading role in the organization of the first-ever cross-departmental chemical-attack drill, hoped that fewer mistakes would be made tomorrow.
In the first rehearsal, chemical-attack response teams from different departments, including the Taipei City police, the EPA and the military, were criticized as lacking coordination and synchronization in their efforts. It was the first time that these different teams had worked together in the same exercise at a public facility.
Those problems were not repeated in yesterday's rehearsal, which was acted out according to a script and came off largely without problem.
Erich Shih (
"There is not much to complain about the rehearsal. The only thing I can complain about is that it was a well-scripted show. It's so well-scripted that I doubt whether the response teams could react so rapidly in a real situation," Shih said.
"Further, the chemical-attack response capabilities demonstrated in the rehearsal do not include the handling of a mass of people wounded in a gas attack. In a real event, the number of casualties would be much greater than demonstrated [here]," he said.
An army official who participated in the rehearsal said there are other serious problems with the design of the drill.
One of the problems is the reaction time that each response team needs to arrive at the scene and begin its action, the official said, who declined to be identified.
The army's 33rd chemical group, for instance, would require 115 minutes to reach the Hsiao- Nanmen MRT station and begin chemical-agent detection and decontamination procedures, according to information provided by the EPA. The group, which is located in Chungli, sent a battalion of troops to participate in yesterday's rehearsal.
The 33rd chemical group is the army's closest chemical-attack response unit to the Taipei metropolitan area.
Military police units, some of which have chemical-agent detection capabilities, need over half an hour to get their forces to the Hsiao-Nanmen MRT stop from their nearest equipped post.
The reaction times released by the EPA for each of the chemical-attack response teams varies widely between 33 minutes and 140 minutes.
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
CAUSE AND EFFECT: China’s policies prompted the US to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific, and Beijing should consider if this outcome is in its best interests, Lai said China has been escalating its military and political pressure on Taiwan for many years, but should reflect on this strategy and think about what is really in its best interest, President William Lai (賴清德) said. Lai made the remark in a YouTube interview with Mindi World News that was broadcast on Saturday, ahead of the first anniversary of his presidential inauguration tomorrow. The US has clearly stated that China is its biggest challenge and threat, with US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly saying that the US should increase its forces in the Indo-Pacific region
ALL TOGETHER: Only by including Taiwan can the WHA fully exemplify its commitment to ‘One World for Health,’ the representative offices of eight nations in Taiwan said The representative offices in Taiwan of eight nations yesterday issued a joint statement reiterating their support for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with the WHO and for Taipei’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA). The joint statement came as Taiwan has not received an invitation to this year’s WHA, which started yesterday and runs until Tuesday next week. This year’s meeting of the decisionmaking body of the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, would be the ninth consecutive year Taiwan has been excluded. The eight offices, which reaffirmed their support for Taiwan, are the British Office Taipei, the Australian Office Taipei, the
RSS