Questionable headlines - Formosahut forum

OK, this just seems a bit off somehow:

Man charged for starting Taiwan Carrefour logistics center fire

Although entirely possible, this bit of the article caught my eye:

After months of investigation, prosecutors concluded the fire was started due to oversight. They held Hsu accountable, citing that he failed to put out cigarettes after smoking in a pallet storage area at 6:58 and 7:07 a.m. on March 14.

At around 7:16 a.m., pallets began burning next to where Hsu had been smoking.

At around 7:16AM? After months of investigation? The seems suspiciously specific and just, well, odd odd as fuck.

Upon reviewing surveillance camera footage, prosecutors confirmed that Hsu was the only smoker at the scene around the time the fire started. The pallets began burning within 10 minutes of Hsu leaving.

Hsu was charged with “negligently setting fire to an occupied building.”

OK, good, OK. So, if you had this surveillance footage, why did it take months? And, here's a leap, were there no fire detectors? Who was responsible for THAT?

If I were the insurer, I'd be paying for the overtime to look into this 'negligence'.

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I see what you mean - I've smoked a lot of cigarettes in my day - never started a single fire.

Arson would have to be high on the list of possible causes - it's the main warehouse for the biggest supermarket in Taiwan. Talk about hitting the food-chain ...

If it wasn't arson, you could see how such sites could easily become targets.

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Yeah, it's pretty suspect. But then I have to remind myself it is Taiwan, land of mega infrastructure fuck ups. It's odd seeing as Taiwan builds the best chips in the world.

Just in the time I lived there, we had two major, world class fuck ups. The biggest and by far the least noticed in the world media was the 2014 underground pipeline explosions.

Here's a video.

Another major fuck up was the Kaoping (Kaohsiung-Pingtung) bridge collapse of 2000.

And those are just a couple of the most outstanding industrial/infrastructural fuck ups that happened while I lived there. There were many more smaller ones.

Oh, let's not forget the Kaohsiung swim park fire. Oh, wait, I was searching for that, and i came across this fire from last year which took place in a building literally right next to the building I first lived in when I arrived in Kaohsiung. These places were so dilapidated that my roommate, I'm not joking, bought a rope long enough to reach down 12 floors (we lived on the top floor) because in case of fire, we were toast.

Fubeilu fire of 2021

Now, where's that bit about the swim park... here we go!

But all of the above are pretty clear negligence. The Careforre fire, well, that's different. But, my point is that there is a history of pretty lax enforcement of safety code in Taiwan, and maybe after not living there for a few years I've just forgotten how lax it can be.

Here's a screen grab from the video posted above. Our Kaohsiung home is very close to one of the main roads where this happened, San Duo Rd. It's a major road in Kaohsiung. From reports, you may think this was a small explosion. It was massive, When we crossed San Duo Rd., we couldn't see where the destruction ended. It reached for kilometers. And that was just one of the main roads affected. It's astonishing that this wasn't bigger international news. But then, it's Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

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Ahr, the old double-edged sword that is Taiwan ...

On one hand, you don't have the government up your arse over every little thing, which is great - on the other hand, you end up with some major cock-ups due to slack rule enforcement - or corrupt developments like Miramar.

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