By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter

The Ministry of Environment has announced the establishment of three environmental emergency response sites in Hualien, Nantou and Kinmen counties, which are expected to expedite emergency response to chemical emergencies.

Chemicals Administration Director-General Tsai Meng-yu (蔡孟裕) on Tuesday said the three response sites were set up mainly to overcome challenges like geographical limitations and climate impact.

For example, a fire broke out in a laboratory at Hualien County’s National Dong Hwa University on April 3 last year, but connecting roads had collapsed due to an earthquake, preventing the ministry’s technical team from reaching the scene to provide help in time, he said.

Photo: CNACNA

Kinmen is an outlying island that relies on air transit as its primary means of connecting to the outside world, he said, but air transit is vulnerable to external factors such as typhoons or heavy fogs, which can ground flights, he said.

Counting the three newly established sites, there are a total of 13 such environmental emergency response units nationwide, and each has a technical team consisting of four personnel with professional disaster response training, Tsai said.

The leaders of the teams in Hualien, Nantou and Kinmen counties have seven to 20 years of disaster response experience with extensive hands-on knowledge, he added.

According to Minister of Environment Peng Chi-ming (彭?明), the ministry has spent a year planning the establishment of an independent administrative institution as the “national chemical safety response center.”

That is to prepare where possible for the likelihood of increased chemical emergencies, especially as lithium batteries are being widely used in electronic products such as mobile phones or electric vehicles, he said.

Fires at a landfill could rage for more than 10 days and cannot be promptly extinguished simply by spraying water from aircraft, he said, citing the example of a fire that occurred at a temporary waste storage site in Tainan’s Houbi

District (後壁) on Nov. 21.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, although waste lithium batteries have been identified as the main cause of fires occurring in many other landfill sites over the past few years.

The draft proposal to establish a national center for chemical safety response has been sent to the Executive Yuan for approval and is expected to be sent to the legislature for review later this year, Peng said.

National Fire Agency Director-General Hsiao Huan-chang (蕭煥章) said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to set up a “world alliance for disaster management” to enhance cooperation with other countries in disaster prevention and rescue, particularly in international information exchanges and joint training or exercises.

The establishment of the alliance aims to not only provide a platform for inviting disaster response experts to Taiwan to share their expertise and experiences, but also help promote relevant equipment or response doctrine developed in Taiwan with the world, he said.