The Weierkang Club occupied a three-story building at No. 54 and 56, Section 2, Taizhonggang Road, with a karaoke box operating in the adjacent unit. The first two floors served as dining spaces; the third was used as an office. When the fire broke out, diners on the upper floors discovered that the emergency exit on the first floor had been blocked with bricks, and the second-floor exit was sealed with corrugated metal. A third exit on the upper floor led to a parking garage, but the restaurant's employees had already fled the building without informing customers of that route. With the staircase in flames and every visible exit impassable, people crowded toward the second-floor windows.

The windows were made of tempered glass, designed to resist shattering. Trapped diners struck the middle of the panes, not knowing that tempered glass can only be broken at its corners, where the internal stresses are concentrated. The glass held. Outside, emergency services responded quickly. A fire station stood nearby. But the illegally constructed karaoke box attached to the restaurant obstructed access, making it difficult for firefighters to reach the building and deploy equipment effectively. The fire burned for approximately two hours before it was fully extinguished. When rescuers finally entered, they found the dead pressed against the windows they could not break.

The aftermath reached from the restaurant's management to the highest levels of city government. The club's manager was ordered to pay compensation to the families of the deceased and served four years in prison for negligent homicide. The Taichung City Government was also ordered to pay compensation. Four government officials were impeached: Taichung City Mayor Lin Bai-rong was placed on probation for half a year, along with the directors of the Department of Public Works, the Construction Bureau, and the Police Department Commissioner. The breadth of the accountability reflected the depth of the systemic failures that the fire had exposed.

On July 12, 1995, less than five months after the fire, Taiwan's Legislative Yuan passed the first major overhaul of the Fire Services Act since its introduction in 1985. The legislation tightened building safety codes, inspection requirements, and penalties for violations. The Weierkang Club fire had revealed what was already widely suspected: that rapid commercial development across Taiwan had outpaced the regulatory framework meant to keep people safe. Bricked-up exits, illegally constructed additions, and absent safety protocols were not unique to one restaurant on one road. The 64 people who died in the Weierkang Club became the human cost of that gap between growth and governance, and their deaths forced the country to confront it.