Taiwan News
Date: 2016-02-13
By: Taiwan News, Staff Writer

Two days ahead of the Lunar New Year, on February 6, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked Southern Taiwan, leaving 116 dead and 11 collapsed buildings in Tainan City in its wake.

The 16-story-tall Weiguan Jinlong building in the Yongkang District was one of those buildings, on its own responsible for 114 of the dead. The tragedy is not only a natural disaster, it is also a man-made calamity.

For at least a part, voters allowed local and central governments not to do anything about disaster prevention management, while also allowing politicians on central and local levels to spend budgets on minor elements instead.

During the week since the quake, netizens succeeded in locating the company responsible for the collapsed project, leading to the detention of the main developer, Lin Ming-hui. A lecture from last summer by former Interior Minister Lee Hong-yuan was shared online because he told his audience that Taiwan lacked an earthquake prevention consciousness and might one day pay dearly for that.     [FULL  STORY]