TAIPEI – The scene was straight out of a movie: An apartment building in Taipei shook and sank an entire storey into the ground.

Residents in the vicinity screamed. A child burst into tears. 

Multiple viral video clips capturing the Sept 7 incident showed what was originally a five-storey building in Taipei’s Dazhi neighbourhood turning into one with four floors. 

At least four other apartment buildings in the area tilted and cracked.

While no one was hurt, the dramatic incident has exposed loopholes in Taipei’s construction regulations and raised questions of negligence in the island’s construction industry, where some companies cut corners at the expense of safety.

According to the government’s preliminary assessments, the building sank due to subsidence, because of a large construction project nearby. City officials said the company in charge, the publicly traded Kee Tai Properties, had excavated to a depth of three floors without completing proper foundation work for it to proceed safely.

“Clearly, there were problems starting from the design stage of the project,” Associate Professor Shan Hsin-yu, from the civil engineering department at Taiwan’s National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, told The Straits Times.

“Did the company take into account that soil in the Dazhi area is very weak, like soft clay?” he added, noting how Taiwan’s soil is not homogenous. 

Prof Shan also said that site investigation reports, while necessary for every construction project in Taipei, do not need to be signed off by a professional geotechnical engineer.

“Such reports are often looked over by the company’s own architects, which leaves room for errors. They are not true experts who know how to best assess the soil and earth conditions,” he said.

On its part, Kee Tai has said that it would accept responsibility for the incident, and that it would help pay rent for the affected residents – around 25 households in the whole building – for the next three years as they seek new homes. The company’s chairman, Mr Chen Shih-ming, apologised at a press conference and resigned within a week.

But questions arose over whether the company had deliberately avoided getting a structural review for its excavation procedures.

According to Taipei city regulations, only excavations 12m or deeper need to undergo reviews by a third-party auditor. Kee Tai’s excavation in this case was to a depth of 11.95m.

“The numbers are so close that people would wonder about the company’s intentions. But I think more importantly, this has shown that Taipei’s regulations need to be a lot more stringent,” said Mr Liang Shih-tung, executive director of the New Taipei City Professional Civil Engineers Association. 

He pointed to the regulations in New Taipei City – which surrounds the capital – where third-party reviews are required for excavations 9m or deeper.

According to local media reports, Dazhi residents had discovered cracks in their apartment walls and pipes as early as April. They placed blame on the Kee Tai project, and filed complaints with the local authorities. 

In such instances, however, regulations stipulate that the construction company in charge should assess if any damage to neighbouring buildings had been caused by its work. Kee Tai had hired its own experts, who deemed construction to be safe. 

Mr Liang said: “That’s another major loophole. Shouldn’t an independent party assess the situation?” 

In response to the ongoing debate, which has dominated the news cycle over the past week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an has said that he would set up a task force to look into the Dazhi case and review construction regulations. 

But experts say that Taiwan needs much more than just updates to mechanisms. 

“Taiwanese do not have the best awareness of safety. They often want to save time or money, and so it’s not uncommon for construction projects to be wrapped up as quickly as possible,” said Prof Shan, who said that attitudes need changing. 

“As long as it looks pretty okay from the outside, people will be like, ‘Okay, it’s fine’.” 

One of the biggest construction project disasters in recent years was in 2016, when the Weiguan Golden Dragon building in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan crumbled following an earthquake.

All but two of the 117 fatalities from the disaster had been trapped inside the building, which was found to have been built using commercial cooking oil tin cans in its pillars.

Mr Liang said: “There are always many reasons leading to any construction accident, but there are always ways to reduce such risks. Taiwan can definitely do better.”