The Taipei City Government is to increase public safety inspections, hold disaster prevention and response drills, and modify fire protection plans for Taipei Main Station in preparation for the Universiade next month, Taipei Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) said yesterday.
The Taipei City Fire Department has disaster prevention and relief measures to enhance safety in and near the station, but a center is to be officially established in March 2019, Teng said.
“Taipei Main Station has a complicated layout. More than 500,000 people pass through it each day,” he said. “It links four transportation networks and four shopping malls.”
An inspection by the fire department found four major risk factors, which are the channeling of fire and smoke in the event of a fire; the large number of people in the station; complicated evacuation routes; and the complex structure of the facility, Teng said.
Without good lateral communication among the eight organizations in the station (four transportation agencies and four malls), it would be difficult to locate the site of a disaster, let alone control the situation in the first few critical minutes, he said.
Taipei Fire Department Commissioner Wu Jun-hung (吳俊鴻) said injuries often occur during stampedes triggered by panic, which can happen when incidents happen in a crowded space, so guiding a crowd to safety in the first few minutes is crucial.
To improve disaster prevention and evacuation routes, the department is to increase inspections, modify fire protection plans and hold another joint drill before the Universiade, he said, adding that a forward command post would be set up outside the station to direct and dispatch rescue efforts in a disaster.
National Taiwan University Hospital emergency-room doctor Shih Fu-yuan (石富元), who was commissioned to conduct a safety review of the station, said he was surprised that the emergency disaster response measures were so complicated, with no lateral communication mechanism between the agencies.
Convenience and commercial benefit were seen as more important than safety at the station, Shih said.
“Who would save commuters if a disaster occurred at the station?” he said.
Shih has submitted a report to the city government about the safety issues he observed.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has criticized the Ministry of Transportation and Communications for being too slow in establishing a joint disaster prevention center at the station.
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