Developers held after earthquake destroys building

TAINAN, Taiwan — The police have arrested the builder of a 17- story apartment complex that collapsed in a predawn earthquake Saturday here in southwestern Taiwan, the city government announced Tuesday afternoon.

Lin Minghui, developer of the Wei- Guan Golden Dragon building, and two of his associates from the Wei- Guan Construction Co., the business that he used to build the apartment complex, were arrested late Monday night, said Ellen Hsueh, a municipal spokeswoman. Liu ShihChung, one of Tainan’s two deputy secretaries-general, said Lin and his associates had been arrested on suspicion of criminal business misconduct resulting in fatalities.

The arrest of Lin and his associates is likely to draw considerable attention in mainland China. Poor construction practices by government contractors were widely blamed for the collapse of many schools and the deaths of many children during the Sichuan province earthquake that killed about 70,000 people and left nearly 18,000 missing in western China in 2008.

When protests over the schools threatened to spread out of control, the Beijing authorities silenced the criticism and limited judicial actions against the contractors.

Mixing sarcasm with envy of Taiwan’s willingness to hold developers accountable for how their buildings fared in earthquakes, one person wrote Tuesday night on Chinese social media that, “If they did it this way on the mainland, would there be any developers left in China?”

In Tainan, firefighters and other rescue specialists had pulled 39 bodies from the wreckage of the collapsed building, while an additional 109 people were missing and believed to still be under the rubble. Only two other people died from the earthquake in this city of 1.8 million.

The arrest of Lin, who had disappeared after the building’s collapse, came hours before local officials decided to deploy house- size excavating machines to drill, tug and tear at the huge mounds of debris on the site. Rescuers delayed using the equipment for three days after the earthquake, for fear that the machines might cause the wreckage to subside further, collapsing the tiny cavities in which more than 100 people are feared trapped.

The removal of a 15year- old boy’s body from the wreckage Tuesday brought the death toll to 41. An additional 96 people had been hospitalized.