Sad news in Taichung, more sad is new build of major company, they should be better
Fire safety seems to be a big issue in Taiwan
Focus Taiwan has a report on this awful incident:
Guy
Extremely surprised this doesn’t happen more often. I won’t step foot on a job site without Nomex and a clear escape path (we usually must clear a path first thing on a job site) in case things turn to shit.
The DPP’s push towards 100% localization is a huge issue. Most projects we must use inferior locally made products just to satisfy their greed when there are far superior products globally available. Fire proofing is a huge problem since the local manufacturers are decades behind industry standards.
They claim it’s welding sparks that started the fire. The systemic issue that lead to the fire won’t be addressed, but they’ll just throw the welder under the bus.
Nomex suit won’t help you in a fire, it’s smoke that kills you.
Nomex does what it is supposed to do, keep the burns off the body until you have time to escape. As well, all my employees are required to have a bag that includes a respirator and each team carries a smoke/chemical detector. On 99% of job sites, my teams are the only ones who take safety precautions seriously.
But you are right, some small contractor will take all the blame, not the management who cuts every damn corner they can.
From what I was just told, the fire was completely avoidable. A team was painting on one floor with a solvent based paint and a welder on the floor below decided it was a good time to light that spark. Boom.
In many countries, solvent-based paint is slowly being phased out, but of course Taiwan’s coating companies are decades behind and are still using high solvent based coatings. Got to protect local companies and their profits.
Surprised how much I smell oil based paint being used here
It’s less to do with solvent based paint, it’s that you don’t do welding while painting. It’s like there’s no order of operation here
The “heavy fine” is only 5 million NT 
Edit: up to 5 million for the pollution. Not sure the rest
Saw on the news saying it was a pile of foam catching on fire or something too, or at least contributed.
Come on guys. As much as people pile on about @Taiwan_Luthiers … this short and to the point post is actually so far beyond bang on it deserves complete respect.
I couldn’t agree more!
TL, dont make it wierd hahaha
Fines in Taiwan are a business expense. A tax , if you will. It’s one of the biggest issues with taiwans modern day development. If people went to jail and companies were dismantled after killing people, there might be the slightest bit of hesitation towards being stupid/lazy/greedy. But, to be fair. This seems like truly just morons running the show and not knowing what they are doing. Rather than intentional evil which is also the norm here.
A dismantling of companies seems justified, massive fines and not allowing same people to change names and/or new companies formed. Tie this shit to their DNA.
That and flammable foam used in the building, is that not against fire codes? I mean think about these things going up later because of an electrical faults. Shouldn’t foam have fire retardant treatment?
But the welding they do here is completely wack too… Almost zero PPE is being worn, even Tig welder aren’t wearing PPE.
Guess they didn’t have a fire watch policy when welding either. Or using flame retardant pads in the welding area. Or wetting down the work area. Just grab the welder and weld I guess.
Where was management when all this was happening. Yikes.
This is exactly how it’s done. There’s no organization when it comes to construction, from a few sites I’ve seen. Basically everyone does their thing, no one’s watching for anyone else. Lets not forget no hoods or any protective equipment. If they won’t do that what makes you think they will splash water in places or use fireproof cloth? Every safety rules are written in blood.
There’s been a lot of blood already though, not many safety rules
It is 100% due to solvent based paint being used and worker safety is the primary reason most developed countries are moving by away from these types of coatings. Air quality standards being the other reason.
Taiwan companies are pressured to use local manufacturers and TW’s local coating manufacturers don’t want to spend the money nor have the ability to develop their own water-based system or 100% solids coatings. As well, lead-based paint is still legal and widely used here.
Accidents involving solvent-based paints are preventable, but happen quite often. Lost a few dear friends 15 years ago in a work site explosion due to a buildup of solvents in a contained space. This was in California.
Two of the dead were undocumented migrant workers. They were just 24 and 20. The one who was 24 has an eight-month old child.
Five people from contractors booked on negligent homicide charges.
Of course they’ll happily throw contractors under the bus but no rules about safety will ever be made.
I don’t doubt the reality of the safety issues you are highlighting, but…
-
Is anyone really pushing for 100% localization on all projects? I find this difficult to believe.
-
It is not the DPP or the KMT who is pushing localization. Industrial policy including localization is baked into the Taiwan model. The politicans go to the civil servants and say: ‘make me a policy that can attract green energy investment and will development a green energy equipment business in Taiwan.’ Civil servants fill on all the details. These will include localization requirements because it has been Taiwaese policy for many many decades that foreign investment should lead to a Taiwanese supply chain to support the foreign-invested project. Taiwanese should also learn the technology and how to manage the projects so that the expensive foreign experts can be sent home as soon as possible. See development of steel, petrochemicals, MRT etc. for the many earlier examples.
Also, this warehouse is completely unrelated to foreign-invested projects. It’s part of PxMart’s logistics. PxMart is legendary for being tightfisted even by Taiwanese standards. Its contractors will use the cheapest products on the market regardless of whether there are better ones available.