TAIPEI -- A fire that raged through the abandoned lower floors of the 13-story Chengzhongcheng building in Taiwan's southern port city of Kaohsiung left the condominium's last hundred or so residents trapped at the top as smoke and heat poured in.
Firefighters had difficulty reaching residents, many of whom are elderly or disabled, due to large stacks of debris and other refuse on unoccupied levels, according to local media. Once they reached the residential levels, they still had to discern which of the hundreds of apartments were empty and which were occupied.
Thursday morning's fire took 159 firefighters to extinguish and killed 46 people, making it the second-deadliest blaze in Taiwan's modern history. Authorities believe the fire was started by a smoldering coil of incense left in one of the empty rooms and traveled quickly due to the state of disrepair in the building.
The fire was strikingly similar to a deadly blaze in July that killed four people staying in a converted quarantine hotel in northern Taiwan. Much like the Chengzhongcheng building, the hotel was housed on three floors of a former mixed-used building whose downstairs commercial space was largely empty.
Such places are known as "ghost buildings," and local media say there are more than 500 of them across Taiwan. They are leftovers from the island's period of rapid economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s. Chengzhongcheng, which was completed in 1981, once housed a movie theater, a karaoke parlor and several floors of shops before it fell into disrepair when the city center moved elsewhere.
President Tsai Ing-wen said Saturday evening that the fire was due to lax building management regulations that let it fall into a dangerous state of disrepair. Experts say this is a well-known phenomenon.
Buildings constructed after 1996 are required to establish a residential committee, but older buildings are not. Even if they do, there is no guarantee the committees will work well.
"Checks and inspections are often made as a formality, as in Taiwan the execution of the regulations are given to the hands of the property's residential committee," said Francis Chia Hui-lin, an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University.
Chia said committees may clean up public areas ahead of inspections, but then conditions return to normal after inspectors leave. Common fire hazards include the widespread practice of storing personal items and even furniture in hallways and staircases. There is also a common preference for installing bars on windows regardless of which floor the unit is on.
Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen visits a survivor in a Kaohsiung hospital after the fire. © Taiwan Presidential Office/Reuters In large condominiums like Chengzhongcheng, which once housed more than 500 units, the sheer scale of the building and low revenue from penalties can lead inspectors to turn a blind eye, said Ray Chang, a former New Taipei City fire captain who is now the program chair for master's degrees in emergency services at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
"The building code and fire safety code are good but enforcement is hard, especially in this kind of building, where you have less than 50% occupancy and more than 50% abandoned. So how can you fine all of them? It's not even worth it if you send 500 tickets, because the mailing fee is much higher than the penalty," he said.
Older buildings can easily end up in total "anarchy" due to complex rules surrounding property rights, said Michael Fahey, an American lawyer who has been a member of the corporate commercial practice group at the Taipei law firm Winkler Partners since 2002.
Making building changes requires 50% of owners to agree, and demolishing and rebuilding requires 100%, but tracking down owners can be a challenge. This would have been impossible at Chengzhongcheng, where more than half the owners had moved away -- and some out of Taiwan.
"Older buildings like this in Taiwan have dozens if not hundreds of owners. They are not required to have management committees. Maintaining a building with a management committee is extremely difficult. Without one, it is impossible," Fahey said. "The multiple owners make it impossible to agree to a plan to rebuild. As a result, this building and hundreds of other around it in Taiwan become derelict and attract poor and older people who can live nowhere else."
Photos of Chengzhongcheng taken by Taiwanese tabloid Apple Daily in January show a building in deep disrepair. Commercial floors contained rusted elevators, debris and even insulation dangling from broken ceiling tiles, while staircases were locked with gates to prevent movement between floors.
Firefighters and medical workers walk past the condominium after the fire. © Reuters Landlords have few incentives to repair problems like these, Fahey said, due to the weakness of Taiwan's legal system governing smaller civil matters like public nuisance, so if a landlord or resident obstructs a stairwell or fails to make a repair, there are few legal repercussions.
Under Taiwan's legal system, it is difficult to win compensation after an accident or wrongful death, Fahey said, and even then payouts are a maximum of 1 million to 2 million New Taiwan dollars ($35,000 to $75,000). The result is that developers and landlords may decide to cut corners because the cost of a lawsuit is so low "it makes business sense to ignore risks."
Similar cost-cutting and negligence were factors behind one of Taiwan's deadliest train accidents earlier this year, Fahey said, when a train derailed on Taiwan's east coast, killing 49 people and injuring more than 200. The cause of the accident was later linked to problems with oversight at a construction site next to the track that allowed a parked truck to roll into the path of the oncoming train.
Despite the dangers of being a semi-abandoned building, Chengzhongcheng was the last stop for its residents, many of whom were economically disadvantaged, seniors or people living with disabilities or serious illnesses. Taiwanese landlords often discriminate against these kinds of tenants, for fear that if they die on the property it will lose value, said Chun-chieh Chan, office director at the Organization of Urban Re-s in Taipei.
Options are further limited by the fact that public housing is a relatively new phenomenon in Taiwan, so many people end up renting housing well below minimum living standards, said Chan.
Thousands of older Taiwanese are already at risk for this kind of housing insecurity, and many more will face similar challenges in the coming years. Property records indicate that there are 627,000 households with residents over the age of 65 in Taiwan, some 76% occupied by one elderly person living alone. That number has doubled in the past 10 years, indicating the trend will likely continue as Taiwan continues to age rapidly.
On Saturday, Tsai said she would ask her cabinet to examine how to speed up urban redevelopment programs and building safety. Jeff Hsu, an adjunct professor of architecture and urban design and planning at the University of Washington, said the government needs to take the reins from the private sector.
"Public investments and a more coordinated approach are needed to address difficult sites such as the residential tower in Kaohsiung," Hsu said. "To begin, the local governments also need to invest more in building inspections and provide assistance to the most vulnerable populations that tend to occupy these places."