Taiwan takes its 921 lessons to APEC
EARTHQUAKE AFTERMATH: Town an example of how country recovered from massive 1999 earthquake
Liao Zheng-yee was getting ready for bed when the earth moved underneath his feet.
“The walls were shaking and everything was falling and breaking,” said Liao, the headman in the Township of Jhongliao, Taiwan.
“I got everyone outside and we could not believe what was going on,” the 67-year-old said, recounting events of Sept. 21, 1999 — a day entrenched in Taiwan’s consciousness and simply referred to as 921.
That day, a massive 7.6 quake, the deadliest since Taiwan split with China, killed more than 2,400 people, severely injured 11,300 others, destroyed 53,768 buildings, cracked 102 major bridges, damaged 870 schools and displaced tens of thousands of people.
Over the next week, the island nation of 22 million was rocked by 6,570 aftershocks — more than 60 classed as major quakes in their own right — all originating from the same epicentre in central Nantou county, where Liao’s village is located.
Amid the mourning after 921, instinct quickly took over in Jhongliao as survivors willed themselves to triumph over adversities.
Liao and his wife began mobilizing the survivors, setting up food camps, arranging for water, building temporary shelters and tending to the injured.
“Only this one small building in the village did not fall … the rest were gone or badly damaged,” Liao said, guiding visiting journalists through his village. “We needed help and a lot of people came to help.”
Prior to the quake, Jhongliao, an agricultural hamlet of old brick houses, had 4,829 households, many home to foreign wives who are needed to combat an exodus of the young.
Here, 180 lost their lives, 2,528 homes fell and another 1,417 were severely damaged — proportionally the most severely impacted area for its population of any township in Taiwan.
Today there is little evidence of 921 in Jhongliao as survivors, led by the likes of the village headman Liao, volunteers and government agencies, have rebuilt the community.
Prefabricated units with about 450 square feet of living space provided immediate homes, helping survivors shed a refugee mentality and propelling reconstruction.
Local media reported the distinction was critical to earthquake victims because what they needed was not just a short-term shelter, but also a place where they could start making a living again. The homeless families refused to see themselves as ‘refugees.’
A community educational centre and a public kitchen followed, and stand proudly today. The Chin-shuei primary school, badly damaged by the earthquake, is now housed in a stunning mountain lodge amid the lush central highlands of Taiwan.
At the school, children play and learn without feeling the impacts of 921 — a testament to the resilient social reconstruction of their village.
This week, as Taiwan attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Manila, it will take with it the lessons learned from the township of Jhongliao and 921 to help its regional neighbours better prepare for natural disasters.
Taiwan leads the way in strengthening natural disaster resilience, applying considerable data to improve emergency preparedness as well as typhoon, earthquake and flood-risk management.
Last September, the country signed a memorandum of understanding with APEC aimed at promoting human security and pledged a contribution of $700,000 US for a diverse array of regional initiatives.
This is in addition to Taiwan’s push in recent years to enhance disaster relief, energy security, food safety and innovative economic development for women, according to Vincent Siew, Taiwan’s special envoy to the APEC summit,
“Taiwan’s achievements in these areas underscore its economic and technological prowess,” he said. “Through sharing its successful experiences, Taiwan has been able to contribute to the global community.”
The Asia-Pacific region, with 52 per cent of the Earth’s surface area and 40 per cent of its population, experiences more than 70 per cent of the world’s natural disasters.
Emergency preparedness is one of the key elements of APEC’s human security agenda, along with countering terrorism and battling pandemics.
Disasters that affect one member’s economy can have significant spillover effects in other economies, the APEC secretariat said in a statement.
When told that the lessons learned from the rebuilding of his county would be part of Taiwan’s APEC agenda, Liao pointed to the once-dried-up central aquifer-fed well in Jhongliao.
“The earthquake shook it open and the water started flowing again. For everything bad that happened here, there has been good and a lot of people came to help. With that help, we rebuilt our lives … that is the most important lesson from 921.”