A 12-story scaffold collapsed in downtown Taipei yesterday, reportedly due to construction negligence, damaging vehicles parked along its fall trajectory and obstructing traffic for hours, though not causing any injuries.
The scaffold was assembled next to a building at the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Ningbo E Street.
Construction Management Office Building Inspection Division head Wei Kuo-chung (魏國忠) said the contractor did not follow safety procedures, failing to properly secure the structure, which led it to collapse when it was hit by a strong gust of wind.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
The contractor was renovating the building’s exterior, as ceramic tiles had been falling off, after the Construction Management Office had ordered the building’s management to carry out repairs, Wei said.
The collapsed scaffold sprawled across six lanes of Roosevelt Road, damaging 15 vehicles and obstructing traffic for two hours until a rescue team removed the structure, Taipei City Government spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said.
A bus parked under the falling scaffold narrowly escaped disaster thanks to its observant driver, who immediately accelerated away from the site as soon as he saw the structure falling.
“The bus driver’s quick response saved the passengers onboard,” a bystander said.
A rescue team rushed to the scene and ensured that nobody was trapped under the fallen scaffold before removing the structure, Lin said.
The contractor received a NT$90,000 fine — the maximum possible — for construction safety negligence and was ordered to suspend all operations, Wei said.
The contractor refused to comment on the incident.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS