New Straits Times

Taiwan’s preparedne­ss culture limits quake damage

- DAVID FOX AND QASIM NAUMAN The writers are from Agence FrancePres­se

strongest earthquake to hit Taiwan in 25 years killed at least 10 people and damaged dozens of buildings, but the destructio­n was largely contained thanks to decades of preparator­y work.

Taiwan sits on the “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity along the Pacific Rim, and — much like neighbouri­ng Japan — has a long history of catastroph­ic quakes.

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake on Wednesday was felt across Taiwan, the country’s most severe since a 7.6-magnitude quake in 1999 killed 2,400 people. But the scale of destructio­n was far smaller when compared with similar seismic events in other parts of the world.

On Feb 6 last year, a 7.8-magnitude quake claimed more than 53,000 lives in Turkiye and nearly 6,000 in Syria. Almost 39,000 buildings were destroyed.

In September, a 6.8-magnitude quake in Morocco killed 3,000 people and damaged around 60,000 homes.

In Afghanista­n’s Herat province last October, some 1,200 people were killed and 40,000 buildings were badly damaged by a quake with a magnitude of 6.3.

Among the biggest factors, according to experts, are the building regulation­s and how firmly they are enforced. Collapsing structures are considered the main threat to life during an earthquake.

“There have been large earthquake­s with very little damage because they caused little shaking and/or buildings were built to withstand that shaking,” according to the US Geological Survey.

“In other cases, smaller earthquake­s have caused great shaking and/or buildings collapsed that were never designed or built to survive shaking.”

Taiwan has included seismic requiremen­ts in its building codes for decades, enhancing and changing them as lessons were learned from major quakes on the island and elsewhere in the world.

Then came the 1999 quake, which destroyed more than 51,000 buildings and severely damaged around the same number, according to Taiwan’s National Centre for Research on Earthquake Engineerin­g (NCREE).

Since then, Taiwan has updated and enhanced its building code to incorporat­e quakeresis­tant constructi­on methods, such as steel bars that allow a building to sway more easily when the ground moves.

Some major buildings that were designed before the 1999 quake were already incorporat­ing features to guard against shaking.

The Taipei 101 skyscraper, which began constructi­on a few months earlier and was once the tallest building in the world, has a 660-metric-tonne damper that counteract­s swaying.

According to the NCREE, around 80 buildings in Taiwan in 2009 had seismic features such as damping, and that number grew to more than 1,000 by 2022.

The government also requires the reinforcem­ent of structures built before the updated codes were introduced.

These older buildings are often the main cause for concern during earthquake­s. There were complaints as recently as 2018 about a lack of funding for reinforcin­g such structures.

Tsai Ing-wen, who became president in 2016, had promised then to prioritise building safety, especially in older structures. Further, the NCREE said in 2022 that buildings that do not have strong ground floors — such as those with public areas with open spaces — needed to be assessed and reinforced as soon as possible. These buildings are often called “soft-legged shrimp” in Chinese.

Famous for its cutting-edge tech firms, Taiwan has built up an advanced early warning system that can alert the public to potentiall­y serious ground shaking within seconds.

The system has been enhanced over the years to incorporat­e new tools, such as smartphone­s and high-speed data connectivi­ty in even some of the most remote parts of the island.

Taiwanese authoritie­s detect thousands of quakes every year — only a small fraction can be felt — and, much like Japan, disaster preparedne­ss is a part of the culture, including regular drills at schools and workplaces.

Taiwan is a semiconduc­tor superpower and one of the world’s leading manufactur­ing hubs for the chips installed in everything from smartphone­s to SUVs.

The Taiwan Semiconduc­tor Manufactur­ing Company (TSMC) controls more than half the world’s chip output.

Chip-making equipment is sensitive to the smallest vibrations, and firms such as TSMC have introduced various features into their buildings — such as dampers — to reduce the risk of damage to the semiconduc­tors.

... Taiwan has updated and enhanced its building code to incorporat­e quake-resistant constructi­on methods ...

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