Tue, Sep 12, 2023 page3

• Councilors file charge against Kee Tai

  IGNORED: The firm did not heed warning signs from data it recorded more than a month before buildings near its construction site were damaged, a city councilor said

  • By Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
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  Two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei city councilors yesterday filed a criminal complaint against construction company Kee Tai Properties (基泰建設), saying the company had failed to acknowledge warning signs from its monitoring data logged 44 days before seven buildings near its construction site were damaged on Thursday.

  On Thursday night, a diaphragm wall at Kee Tai properties’ construction site in Lane 94, Dazhi Street in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) fractured. Seven buildings adjacent to the site were structurally damaged and some were tilting, including one that partially sank underground.

  Taipei City Councilor Wang Shih-chien (王世堅) on Friday filed a criminal complaint against Kee Tai for offenses against public safety.

  

  Democratic Progressive Party Taipei city councilors Wang Shih-chien, front center, and Chen E-jun, front right, speak to reporters outside the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office in Taipei yesterday.

  Photo: CNA

  However, after obtaining more data, he and Taipei City Councilor Chen E-jun (陳怡君) yesterday rang the bell outside the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office and filed another criminal complaint against the company’s former chairman Chen Shih-ming (陳世銘), who resigned on Sunday, for unspecified intentional attempted murder.

  Wang said that on Friday he had asked for the construction site’s routine monitoring data, but the Taipei Department of Urban Development said the data was in the collapsed construction site.

  On Friday night, he obtained the monitoring report from July 26 — 44 days before the incident — from the Construction Management Office, Wang said.

  The data showed that on July 26, the diaphragm wall construction had been completed, but large-scale excavation had not started, he said.

  The data showed that the maximum “surface settlement” and maximum “building settlement” were minus-58.5mm and minus-27.7mm respectively, both exceeding their action limit, while the building inclinometer (tilt sensor) measured a maximum 590 seconds, exceeding the warning limit, Wang said.

  Kee Tai properties should have paid attention to the warning limit, and should have taken action to prevent conditions from worsening when the action limit was exceeded, but the company continued with the excavation, neglecting the safety of its construction workers and neighboring residents, he said.

  Asked for comment, Taipei Department of Urban Development Commissioner Wang Yu-fen (王玉芬) said the department received the monitoring reports from August and this month from Kee Tai on Sunday, and has asked the company to provide all of its monitoring data.

  The department would turn over the reports to civil engineering associations for review, she said.

  If the associations find that regulations have been breached, disciplinary action would be taken against the associated civil engineer or architect, she said, adding that the department has also commissioned the associations to inspect a further 184 construction sites in the city.
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