Dive Brief:
- Taiwanese police have arrested builder and developer Lin Minghui and two of his associates on suspicion of criminal business misconduct and shoddy construction practices resulting in fatalities in relation to an apartment complex collapse during an earthquake last week in Tainan, Taiwan, according to The New York Times. Rescue officials have confirmed 39 people died in the collapse, and 99 still are missing and believed to be under the rubble.
- Rescuers delayed using heavy equipment for three days over fears that it could potentially cause the collapse of any air pockets sheltering survivors. The site is still so fragile that rescuers have resorted to using buckets to clear debris.
- All but two of the city’s earthquake fatalities were killed in the apartment complex collapse, The Times reported.
Dive Insight:
Authorities said Lin had previously fled after previous bad construction projects or business deals went bad. A Tainan City Council member, Lee Kunshan, who told The Times he has known Lin his entire life, said Lin has changed his name legally at least four times to distance himself from suspect business dealings.
There are already comparisons being made to a 2008 mainland China earthquake in which poor construction practices were blamed for the death of 70,000 people, including schoolchildren who were in the many schools that caved in, according to The Times. Even though there were widespread protests, Chinese authorities did not fully penalize the contractors at fault.
More recently, a landslide in Shenzhen, China, which killed 69 and left eight missing, was determined to have been caused by unstable piles of construction debris that had been stacked nearby in a local landfill set up to accommodate construction waste generated by the area’s unprecedented growth.
According to The Times, Chinese authorities charged 16 people who owned or helped operate the landfill, and one Shenzhen official committed suicide.