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.