Six days after Typhoon Toraji brought death and destruction to Taiwan, a visit by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to one of the severely affected areas yesterday highlighted political and legal difficulties that the government will face in its efforts both to facilitate recovery from the disaster and to prevent similar future catastrophes.
Chen flew aboard a helicopter to the mountainous villages of Chiayi County's Alishan township, where some 800 residents remained cut off by roads blocked by landslides.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Tearful residents petitioned Chen for an immediate clean-up of gravel left by mudslides, which piled up along local river banks to heights of more than 10m during the typhoon, creating a further potential hazard in the event of more mudslides.
They also called upon the government to recycle the gravel as construction materials to enable the county to sell the gravel to fund local reconstruction work thereby helping to expedite its recovery.
The law, however, forbids the sale of gravel obtained from certain areas in the vicinity of -- among other places -- rivers and bridges, according to Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (
Arriving later in the same area, Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu said that, as head of the presidential office's consultative committee on science and technology, she had been informed of Japanese technologies to recycle gravel to make household tiles. She said Taiwan should find ways to make good use of the gravel from the mudslides.
A soil and water conservation engineer, Debbie Weng (鄭麗瓊), told the Taipei Times that the government should start constructing what she called "detention pounds" at the confluence points of rivers prone to mudslides in order to capture gravel from the mudslides.
"The gravel can then be further filtered and recycled to become marketable as construction material," Weng said.
On Friday, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
But DPP legislative whip Lin Feng-hsi (
Echoing Lin's views, another DPP legislator, Tsai Huang-liang (
Tsai said that betel nut planting was just one of the causes of soil erosion and mudslides, and that he hoped that the Cabinet would conduct a further investigation before proposing measures that risked "sacrificing betel nut farmers' rights."
Lin said that the party's legislative caucus had scheduled a meeting with Chang and Council of Agriculture chairman Chen Chih-huang (
In addition, head of the Cabinet's typhoon reconstruction task force, Chen Chin-huang (
Head of the National Fire Administration, Chao Kang (
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS