DEATH FROM ABOVE:Last month’s cold front saw tiles peel off more than 30 buildings, in a phenomenon that saw a Taipei man killed last year by an 80kg stone slab
Taipei Times
Date: Feb 21, 2016
By: Hsu Yi-ping, Chung Hung-liang and Jake Chung / Staff reporters, with staff writer
The Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Agency (CPA) said it
A residential building in New Taipei City with a net cage holding tiles that have fallen off the building’s facade is pictured in an undated photograph. Photo: Lai Hsiao-tung, Taipei Times
is mulling amendments to the Measures Governing Buildings’ Public Security Inspection, Authorization and Application (建築物公共安全檢查簽證及申報辦法) to make inspection of ceramic tiles on a building’s exterior mandatory.
The extreme cold front over the nation last month resulted in more than 30 incidents of tiles peeling off from buildings’ exteriors in Taipei alone, the CPA said.
In March last year, a stone slab weighing 80kg peeled off from the exterior of the United Daily News building, killing 40-year-old Wang Cheng-fang (王成芳), who worked at a cram school in the building.
The agency’s construction management division chief Kao Wen-ting (高文婷) said that older buildings across the nation often have an extra layer of tiles applied to their exteriors, but very few building management committees maintain their building’s exterior. [FULL STORY]
