Taiwan indicts 3 over deadly quake building collapse
TAIPEI (AFP) — A Taiwanese developer was indicted yesterday over the partial collapse of a building that killed 14 people during an earthquake in February, prosecutors said.
The building’s architect and a civil engineer were also charged with causing death and injury by professional negligence, punishable by a maximum five-year jail term.
The lower floors of the 12-story Yun Tsui residential building — which also housed a restaurant and hotel — pancaked when a 6.4-magnitude quake struck the tourist hotspot of Hualien on Feb. 6.
A total of 17 people died across the eastern coastal town, 14 of them in the Yun Tsui building.
Developer Liu Ying-lin was unlicensed and did not have the necessary engineering qualifications, but oversaw the building’s construction instead of contracting a professional firm, said Hualien District Prosecutors Office. ”Yun Tsui building collapsed within eight seconds of the earthquake... due to serious flaws in design, supervision and construction,” said Wang Yi-jen, a spokesman for the office. The flaws included inadequate pillars and reinforcing steel that significantly weakened the building’s seismic capacity, he added. Despite its comparative wealth and a reputation for cutting-edge technology, Taiwan still often sees deadly building collapses during quakes. The Hualien quake came exactly two years to the day after a similar sized tremor struck the western city of Tainan, killing 117 people — mostly in a single apartment block which tumbled.