Su-Hua Highway Collapse Site Heavily Overlaps with Old Mine Sites; Environmental Groups Call on Government to Survey the Entire Route and Identify the Main Cause of the Disaster

During the Dragon Boat Festival long weekend, the Su-Hua Highway collapsed again after rain, leaving over a thousand residents of eastern Taiwan unable to return home smoothly. The Directorate General of Highways also stated that repairs would take four to five months. In response to the repeated collapses along the Su-Hua Highway, environmental groups today compared aerial photos along the route and found that the 112.6-kilometer point, which has collapsed multiple times, heavily overlaps with old mined quarry sites. Although a direct link between mining and rockfalls cannot be confirmed, the government should proactively survey the status of old and new mining areas along the Su-Hua Highway, supervise operators in carrying out vegetation restoration and slope stabilization, and identify the main cause of the incidents. Only then would it truly fulfill its responsibility.

Pan Zhengzheng, a specialist at the Citizen of the Earth Foundation, pointed out that the collapse during this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday occurred at the 112-kilometer to 114-kilometer section. This location has already seen multiple accidents in the past, such as when Typhoon Megi in 2010 brought torrential rain that caused rock and soil to fall, burying a special education teacher, and even more serious incidents in which tour buses were hit by falling rocks and plunged into the sea. Regarding this repeatedly collapsing section, Pan Zhengzheng also said that there are mines both above and below this location. Although the mine above stopped extraction more than a decade ago, its mining site overlaps with the collapse site. While a direct causal relationship between the two cannot be asserted, it may still be one of the factors.