Taiwan News
Date: February 8, 2016
By: CNA

TAIPEI–The cooking oil cans found inside the pillars of a residential complex that collapsed in Tainan during an earthquake Saturday were there for aesthetic purposes and may not have been the cause of the collapse, a structural engineer has said.

Tai Yun-fa (戴雲發) was responding to CNA’s questions on the fact that several cooking oil cans were exposed in the pillars of the 16-story Weiguan Jinlong building in Tainan City after it toppled during the magnitude 6.4 earthquake Saturday.

As of late Sunday afternoon, the death toll had risen to 26, with 24 of those deaths occurring at the Weiguan Jinlong site.

Dozens of people were still unaccounted for in Tainan and the city government said most of them were believed to be still trapped in the ruins of the building.

The Weiguan Jinlong residential complex, which comprised around 200 housing units, was built in the city’s Yong Kang District in 1983 by a construction company that has since gone out of business.     [FULL  STORY]