A contractor is mainly at fault for the collapse of a ceiling at Taoyuan’s Bade Civil Sports Center during an earthquake on Sunday, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said yesterday.
The steel-frame ceiling fell on the badminton courts below, injuring one person, during the magnitude 6.8 earthquake.
In Taoyuan, the quake created an intensity of only 3 on Taiwan’s 7-tier scale and should not have caused such damage, Cheng told a city council meeting.
Photo: Chen En-hui, Taipei Times
Representatives from civil and structural engineering, and architectural associations inspected the site with city officials, and issued a report on their findings on Monday, he said.
The report concluded that the contractor, Reiju Construction, was mainly responsible for the collapse because it had designed and constructed a ceiling with “insufficient durability,” Cheng said.
A secondary cause was the recent installation of light fixtures by the China Youth Corps, the report said.
The sports center, which opened last year, is still under warranty, and the contractor said it would repair the ceiling and pay compensation, Cheng added.
He said he would publish the findings of an inspection into the collapse and look into whether officials at the city’s Office of Public Construction were in any way at fault.
Reiju Construction was also contracted this year to build community sports centers in Chiayi County and New Taipei City, as well as public housing developments in New Taipei City and Taichung, Cheng said.
Videos showing about two dozen people playing badminton on the courts just before the ceiling collapsed have circulated widely on social media.
They have reignited criticism of poor supervision of public projects, following the closure this summer of the new Hsinchu Baseball Stadium due to building flaws.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taoyuan mayoral candidate Simon Chang (張善政) said that if elected, he would order a safety review of all construction projects approved by the city government — which is currently controlled by the Democratic Progressive Party — over the past several years.
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