Maybe they associate smoke detectors with clocks? Because it rings too.
And you know Chinese people find it offensive to be given clocks as gifts.
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Guy
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If you have a smoke detecter you will have a fire, it will invite the fire ghost to your home.
Fire ghouls love the sound of smoke alarms it attracts them, they will stay around and make trouble so they can hear it.
(this is 100% made up on the spot)
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But it’s not a clock. And nobody’s dumb enough to mistake it for one.
I have no idea what gets interpreted as clocks or not… but let’s say superstitious people have really vivid imagination.
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Most battery operated smoke detectors I’ve known have an audible warning as the battery starts to die. Do you know if the Taiwan fire department issued ones do? It’s a good point you raise, I always assumed it was just a basic safety feature of all smoke detectors. But with Taiwan’s middle of last century approach to everything safety, it would not surprise me if they just died silently.
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It most likely still give the warning, as these smoke detectors are likely sold overseas as well. But that warning just gives more reason for them to just remove the battery altogether.
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If I was the fire department, I would install the thing too, in a place so high up amah won’t dare to climb a ladder just to get the battery.
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i call it a stretch.
Nikkei Asia has a report on the tragedy:
Guy
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Very good article. Hits all the points. Especially liked that they had the guts to say that disadvantaged people had no other options but to rent places that do not comply with minimal living conditions.
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And no amah would refuse the personal touch
Yes, good story. City needs do better.
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Country needs to do better.
I think we are headed towards a law against empty places. Extra taxes as penalty. But first, try to unravel inheritance laws and such.
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I read that they are starting to enforce the “no scooter parked on porch” rule, because part of the contributing factor to the fire is all the illegally parked scooter burning up, not to mention blocking escape route.
Not to mention someone burning down the scooters…and that fire moving to the building itself.
Good luck with that one. I know many an individual here where the entire extended family was on board to sell whatever dead old person’s farm, only to have the one wealthy a**hole in the family decide that they “don’t want to”, leaving the property to sit, gathering even more people who will be in line to inherit the property as time goes on…
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Arson’s number one cause. Alcohol the second.
Jesus … might be arson.
Same for fire insurance, the ghosts will look for the contract to burn the paper.