TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The tremors that preceded and followed the 6.8 magnitude earthquake on Sunday (Sept. 18) have again turned a spotlight on the potential risk to public safety posed by Taiwan’s older buildings.
Li Tung-jong (李同榮), a property market expert in Taiwan, said that the country currently has 8.965 million houses, 50% of which are at least 30 years old, citing Ministry of the Interior statistics for the fourth quarter of 2021.
The average age for residential units in the six special municipalities is Taipei (36.2), Tainan (33.2), Kaohsiung (31.9), New Taipei (29.9), Taichung (28.7), and Taoyuan (26.6), respectively.
According to Li, governments have assumed a passive role in pushing for the renewal of derelict structures. Taipei, for example, has completed the health examination of fewer than 50,000 houses and it would take more than 60 years to have all of the residential buildings aged 30 or older checked, UDN quoted him as saying.
He believes it a pressing issue to implement mandatory overhaul and even demolition of structures deemed too dangerous in terms of disaster mitigation. This cannot be achieved without clearing legal hurdles and providing incentives to residents, he stressed.
The need to fast-track building renewal was brought to the fore at a New Taipei city council session on Monday. Councilor Ho Po-wen (何博文) of the Democratic Progressive Party cited former Interior Minister Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) as saying that a magnitude six quake hitting Taipei could knock over 4,000 buildings and 35,000 buildings in the event of a 7.3 quake.
Ho painted a gloomy picture of the most populated city in Taiwan, wrote CNA. As there are 777,000 houses in New Taipei that are over 30 years old, it may take 391.6 years to reach the urban renewal target at a pace of 1,000 overhauled cases per year, according to him.
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