Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that a fire at a Cashbox Partyworld KTV on Taipei’s Linsen N Road on April 26 that resulted in six deaths was mainly due to the company’s misconduct.
Ko again apologized for not fully protecting residents through the city’s fire safety inspections, before he and city officials gave a special report on the incident at the Taipei City Council yesterday morning.
He said that Cashbox had committed two unlawful acts that resulted in the fire.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
First, it turned off the five major fire safety features: indoor fire hydrants, alarm systems, sprinklers, emergency broadcasting systems and smoke exhaust systems, he said.
Second, fire compartmentation in the building — which helps prevent the spread of a fire with fire-resistant doors, floors and walls — had been damaged in renovations, which resulted in fire exit doors that could not be closed, he said, adding that this allowed the fire to spread rapidly to other floors.
After the incident, the city conducted unscheduled fire safety inspections at many enclosed recreational facilities, and ordered those that failed to suspend operations, Ko said.
Under fire safety regulations, the city can only order businesses to improve failed inspections within a given time limit, but the city government invoked the Administrative Enforcement Act (行政執行法) to order the immediate suspension of businesses that might cause serious safety issues, he said.
The city government is to instruct the businesses to enhance fire safety management, improve and thoroughly implement fire safety inspections, and modify the related regulations, Ko said, adding that it would also review how to effectively manage inspections and prevent corruption in the process.
The Taipei Construction Management Office should ensure that businesses have submitted all required documents, including fire safety plans, for construction or renovations, before it grants permits, he said.
Responding to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chen Chung-wen’s (陳重文) suggestion that KTV venues should provide smoke protection masks in its private booths, Ko said that the government would consider asking venues with a large number of customers to provide masks.
Ko said that the Taipei Department of Government Ethics has established a task force to conduct a comprehensive review of the previous fire safety inspections at the Cashbox Partyworld KTV, and that the city government on Thursday would provide a list of officials found to have committed misconduct and who should be punished.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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