Taiwan earthquake: How the island’s two-decade preparation saved it

When catastrophe happen, especially when large disasters strike, the world’s press is drawn like flies to the most serious damage. It is natural. However, it frequently paints a distorted image of what has transpired.

You can see it here in the town Hualien. A 10-story tower is crowded with camera team leaning over at a terrible position. It all appears spooky and terrifying. But that was only one of a handful of houses which suffered functionally, in a town of tens of thousands.

The streets of Hualien appear completely normal a hundred meters away, beyond the officers ring. Retailers and cafés are available, transportation is flowing. If you drove through the city, you would n’t believe it if you were n’t aware a big earthquake had struck days earlier.

The fact that this city has managed to survive essentially unharmed has sparked a debate of how and why.

More than 50 000 people died as a result of earthquakes of the same magnitude dramatic Turkey and Syria just over a year ago. These places, of course, had considerably fewer resources. However, the area of Christchurch in New Zealand was completely flattened when a little smaller 6. 7 magnitude earthquake struck in 2011.

Taiwan, another nation with wrong lines, has made significant progress in overcoming shivers. Some say the wake- up visit was Taiwan’s 1999 Chi Chi quake- the worst in its past. More than 2, 400 persons died as a result of it, and tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed.

I witnessed the aftereffects of that catastrophe. Numerous apartment buildings had fallen in the province of Nantou. How many of them were brand-new was what struck me the most.

A large, 20-story tower that had broken off at its bases and was lying flat on its part, almost entirely alive, is what I remember.

Many people were upset and depressed over why so many brand-new buildings had failed because of the fatal damage. According to researchers, their design had a fundamental flaw. The metal content of the basic pillars was insufficient, and neither were they large enough.

Their findings wo n’t have been entirely a surprise: when I lived in Taipei in the 1990s, there were repeated construction scandals.

After it was discovered that the building I used as a student had been constructed with sea sand-based material, it was condemned. River dust has significantly higher salt content than water sand, which is much less expensive. That causes material cancer by corroding the metal reinforcement bars.

Yet a medium-level earthquake, according to what we were told, could have caused the structure to collapse. The Taipei capital mayor’s additional research revealed that old oil bottles had been inserted into the concrete columns of a new structure.

The design firm was charged with using this ruse to cut costs on concrete while increasing its income.

Since then, a lot has changed. Following the Chi Chi collapse, building standards were changed.

A simple disaster opposition level that entitles all new structures to withstand a certain degree of shaking without suffering significant structural failures has been mandated for all new buildings.

The state is also constantly reevaluating the building’s collapse tolerance levels to identify those that need improvement. Following 1999, they completed a comprehensive geological retrofitting project, which normally involved adding steel frameworks to an exterior or adding additional structural elements like pillars. That also applied to other types of equipment, such as roads.

Prof Yih- Min Wu at the National Taiwan University, who has worked in the government’s response and protection departments for decades, says:” Taiwan is hit so often by harmful earthquakes]that ] most of the bad quality buildings are now gone”.

And crooked design techniques are prosecuted. Following the Tainan disaster in the island’s southern- north in 2016, when a 17- floor high- increase collapsed killing dozens, five people involved in the building’s construction were prosecuted and jailed.

Only one tragic loss of life was reported so far this week as a result of the collapse of a building, the 10- storey building in Hualien that I mentioned earlier. The others were linked to rockfalls and landslides.

And that underscores yet another important factor for why Taiwan this time experienced minor damage.

Luck played a part. Wednesday’s quake began offshore before hitting south of the nearest major population centre, Hualien.

Seismology maps show that because the epicentre was 30 kilometers ( 18 miles ) south of the city, Hualien and its environs were spared the worst damage.

This instead happened in the mountains to the south, west and north, where it unleashed huge rock slides, damaging roads and bridges, and tragically, causing deaths.

Similar events occurred on Wednesday, in contrast to those in Nantou in 1999 and Turkey and Syria in 2013, both of which experienced earthquakes very close to densely populated areas.

The 7.4 earthquake was a incredibly powerful event that shook not only the island but also the entire region.

Fortunately for Taiwan, this time it was well- prepared.

Frances Mao provided additional reporting in Singapore.