My team and I went to Hualien City, near the epicenter of the magnitude 7.2 earthquake. What surprised me was that the day after the quake, shops and cafes were open, and it looked as if life had gone back to normal. The city's largest night market also reopened that day.
Not long ago, I also covered the magnitude 7.6 Noto Peninsula earthquake that struck Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan on New Year's Day. In badly-damaged Wajima City, I saw many houses that had completely collapsed. Of course, these were different quakes in different places, so you can't make a direct comparison. But the sturdiness of Hualien City really impressed me.
We should remind everyone that Taiwan is no stranger to earthquakes. A powerful one in 1999 killed over 2,400 people. After that, Taiwan introduced building codes that have made new buildings much more resistant to tremors. Many of the structures damaged this time were built pre-1999.
However, we also saw some buildings that had suffered major damage, including one that seemed to almost topple into the street. That nine-story building in central Hualien City leaned significantly after the quake, trapping people temporarily and resulting in one death.
Wada Akira, Professor Emeritus, Tokyo Institute of Technology, told us that many of the structures damaged in this quake were vulnerable because their lower levels were altered to allow for the construction of market stalls.
"People want to remove pillars on the first floor and have an open air space to the street. Most of the damaged buildings had this kind of construction, making lower floors weaker than the upper floors. These floors then collapsed after the first floor pillars fell. The pillars must be strong enough to support the weight of the building," Wada said.
Thanks to another expert, Ikago Kohju, NHK World acquired a video demonstrating this principle.
First, we see what happens when an earthquake strikes a building where the lower floor is unaltered. Then, we see what happens when two walls on the lower floor are removed to create open space on the street level.
An experiment shows that a building with fewer walls on the first floor could be weak in terms of quake resistance.
In Taiwan, officials have introduced a program to retrofit buildings erected before the devastating 1999 quake.
"The Taiwan government has a special program of subsidies to building owners for seismic evaluations. If the result shows the building is indeed deficient in quake resistance, the government will then provide subsidies to help building owners retrofit," said Keh-Chyuan Tsai, chair professor of structural engineering at National Taiwan University.
Tsai said it hasn't been easy to fully implement. But while some owners are resistant to signing on, he says there are clear examples where it's paid off, including a hotel in Hualien that was reinforced in 2016.
"From some photos taken before and after the earthquake, the building seemed to perform well while the building across the street was destroyed," he said. "With a little investment, building performance can be greatly improved."
