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February 13, 2016

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Taiwan mourns its quake victims as toll rises to 94

TAIWAN yesterday held a memorial service for the victims of last weekend’s earthquake as the official death toll rose to 94.

Political leaders Ma Ying-jeou and Tsai Ing-wen attended the ceremony, offering flowers and shaking hands with relatives and Buddhist monks before leaving without making any public statements.

Family members lit incense and bowed before photographs of their loved ones, which had been arranged in rows.

Yesterday was significant under traditional Chinese funeral rituals as it marked the seventh day since the tragedy.

Taiwan reported early yesterday that the death toll from the quake had risen to 94, with as many as 41 people still missing, presumed trapped under the rubble.

All but two of the victims were residents of the 16-story Wei-kuan Golden Dragon apartment complex, the only building to collapse during the tremors that hit Tainan, which is Taiwan’s oldest city.

Rescuers said that the chances of finding any more survivors were slim, but that efforts to do so would continue.

Assets frozen

Tainan’s district court yesterday gave the city government the go-ahead to freeze up to NT$30 million (US$908,000) in assets belonging to the building’s developer Lin Ming-hui and three associates, according to a government statement.

Prosecutors questioning Lin and two others connected with the building have said there were “flaws” in the residential complex, including a lack of steel reinforcement girders.

Pictures of the ruins also showed tin cans and foam were used as fillers in the concrete, exacerbating public anger over the latest safety scandal to hit the island.

“The Tainan district court handled it quickly, and granted ... provisional seizure up to NT$30 million of the assets of the related people,” the statement said.

It added the move was to prevent the developer and associates from “disposing (of) assets.”

Lin and two others have been detained on charges of professional negligence resulting in death.

The fourth person to have assets seized was a contractor used during the construction of the Wei-kuan building. He has not been detained.

The NT$30 million is a preliminary figure to cover the property damages of victims who have already made claims, the Tainan government statement said.

The government has also identified land owned by Lin — totalling at least 30 plots in in the city — and has directed local authorities to prevent any sale of those assets.

Distraught relatives of residents said they had complained over cracks in the walls of the building.

The Wei-kuan building was home to 96 apartments and was completed in 1994, before a new building code was brought in after a 1999 earthquake that left 2,400 people dead.

Last week’s tremor, which the China Earthquake Administration said had a magnitude of 6.7, hit the city of Kaosiung at 3:57am on February 6.

Local monitoring authorities put the scale of the earthquake at 6.4.




 

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