The safety inspector for the Lincoln Mansions site was found in a dog cage in the countryside, naked and with two bottles of water, days after being kidnapped. That may have swayed his decision on approving the joint’s development.
HG
two things:
Mesheel wrote, and I believe she was very wrong so let’s stop this rumor right now: "I was told, that at the press conference Lian Zhan and his underdogs were amused by the failure of the firefighters. " She means Lien Chan the KMT top dog. I am SURE he did NOT laugh or show amusement at this tragedy, mesheel. Who told you this?CAn you verify? He may have been caught on video smiling, but this is a Chinese cultural trait of smiling at tragic events. It is the same as our frown or sad look. He certainly was NOT amused at the loss of life or the failure./incompetence of the firemen! Please, get your facts straight first. BTW, I do not like Lien Chan one bit, but please, a little humanity here!
TWO: weird, the Taipei Times on Sunday morning paper, too late to cover the fire, which broke out at 1:30 am, almost same time as 911, oops, numerology here, …the Taipei Times on Sunday featured on page 2 a great photo of how the fire department was doing public service announcemnts around Taipei to warn people not to have metal cages outside their apartments and if they did, to make sure the doors opened. AND THEN THIS…the very same day… ouch!
EFF
turns out a woman had an argument with her hubby the night before, doused herself with gasoline in anger after the quarrel, THEN THIs…
yes, so sad. so preventable, such a tragic loss of life, uncalled for
APPLE DAILY newspaper today has special 8 page photo section of very graphic photos, some just so tragic…worth your NT$10 to go to 711 and buy one today…
One of the reasons that I chose my present apartment and my two before that was because none of them had bars on the windows. At the least, I’d be able to jump down two or three floors, hopefully on my super soft mattress. Because even if I could get out the door, if it were night and the elevator were shorted out by the fire (as if I’d take it anyway in a fire), I’d kill myself going down the stairs as they are full of boxes, bicycles, etc.
i live on the 4th floor of my building. last year i bought a long rope for NT$500, so if there is an earthquake or fire, i can repel down the sides to the garden below, soft landing if i fall. i call it my insurance policy, and my gf laughs. no kidding
I certainly would never live in a place with bars on the windows – the mere thought gives me the horrors. I’d much rather face the chance of being burgled than that of being trapped in a burning building behind those bars.
In the past, I always checked very carefully that I’d have a way out other than the stairs should my building catch fire. Looking down from the balcony of my previous 4th-floor flat, I frequently pondered on how I’d first drop down my mattress to cushion any fall and then attempt to swing down to the balcony below and so on all the way to the ground. Getting a rope is a very sensible precaution, Formosa – I often thought about doing the same thing (and was laughed at when I mentioned it, too), but I never found anything suitable when I was shopping (I had something that I thought might do at a pinch, but it didn’t come close to what I had in mind).
However, now I’ve moved into a 15th-floor flat, and have no way out other than the single flight of stairs. As I doubt if the fire brigade has any ladders that could reach so high, it scares me a lot to think about what my options would be if the place caught fire. I do have smoke-detectors and sprinklers in the flat, but I can’t help wondering if they’d even work or be much use if needed.
[quote]I certainly would never live in a place with bars on the windows – the mere thought gives me the horrors. I’d much rather face the chance of being burgled than that of being trapped in a burning building behind those bars.
[/quote] – Omni
I think that if you look closely, these “cages” should have a “hatch” somewhere. Mine does.
Also, the fire trucks could not get into the narrow lanes of this last fire, the water hoses had to be fed from hydrants far away resulting in a loss of pressure (yes, yes…in a closed system the distance of the hose from the hydrant should not matter…this is how the Chinese explained it to me.). Any way you look at it, however, the pressure could only squirt up to the second floor as the flames were throughout the eight-story building.
When your number is up, it’s up.
“At least 96 killed in nightclub inferno”
"Fire Chief Charlie Hall said because the wooden structure was small and was built before 1976, it was not required to have a sprinkler system. But when asked if one would have helped the situation, he said, “If there were sprinklers in this building, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Safety: The price of miracle development?”
"In October 1994 a central section of the Songsu Bridge in Seoul collapsed under the weight of rush hour traffic. Dozens of vehicles and their occupants fell into the Han River, 32 people died.
"In April 1995 a gas explosion at a construction site in Taegu killed or injured 300 workers and passers-by.
"Two months later in June 1995 Seoul’s Sampoong Department Store collapsed in the worst peacetime disaster in South Korean history. More than 500 shoppers were crushed to death and another 900 were injured.
"And over the last 20 years Korean Air, the South Korean flag-carrier, has been plagued by disasters in which more than 800 people have died. Most recently eight people were killed when a Korean Air cargo jet crashed into a construction site near Shanghai airport.
I hope you keep the key to that escape hatch ready to hand, Wolf.
My guess is that many of the occupants of caged-in apartments have never given a thought to whether or not they’d be able to open their cages in an emergency, even if they are supposed to be openable. It seems to me that most Taiwanese pay little or no attention to such matters, except, briefly, in the aftermath of the latest disaster.
If you think about bad things happening, they will! It’s bad luck. Everybody knows that. 
After the 921 earthquake in Taiwan, some people here in Europe started to wonder, what it would be like, if there was such a big earthquake here. Result: It would be a disaster, especially in old towns like Zurich, were the alleys can be very narrow. There are no sprinklers, no smoke detectors here and I don’t really see how firemen could get into my alley…but luckily, we don’t use gas…at least something…
What I see is a bunch of people parking their cars without a thought for another human being on earth, and then when the fire trucks can’t get through, blaming the government for allowing them to have parked there.