When Taiwan’s biggest earthquake in half a century hit its east coast, buildings in the nearest city, Hualien, swayed and shook. As more than 300 aftershocks rocked the island over the next 24 hours through Thursday morning, buildings shook again and again.
But for the most part, they stood.
Even the two buildings that suffered the most damage remained largely intact, allowing residents to safely climb out of upper-story windows. One of them, the rounded, red brick Sky Building, leaning precariously after its first floors collapsed, mainly attracted curious onlookers.
The building is a reminder of how much Taiwan has prepared for disasters like the 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck the island on Wednesday. Thanks to a combination of improvements in building codes, public awareness, and highly trained search and rescue operations—and possibly a dash of good luck—casualty figures have been relatively low. By Thursday, 10 people had died and more than 1,000 were injured. Several dozen were missing.
“Earthquakes of similar magnitude in other societies have killed many more people,” said Daniel Aldrich, director of the Global Resilience Institute at Northeastern University. Of Taiwan, he added: “And most of those deaths, it seems, came from rock slides and boulders, rather than building collapses.”
Across the island, rail traffic had resumed on Thursday, including trains to Hualien. Workers stuck in a rock quarry were rescued by helicopter. The roads were slowly being repaired. Hundreds of people were trapped in a hotel near a national park due to a blocked road, but were attended by rescuers and doctors.
On Thursday in Hualien City, the area around the Heaven building was sealed off while construction workers tried to prevent the leaning structure from toppling over completely. They first placed concrete blocks on tripods that looked like giant Lego pieces in front of the building, then piled dirt and rocks on top of those blocks with backhoes.
“We came to see for ourselves how serious it was, because it’s leaning,” said Chang Mei-chu, 66, a retiree who rode a scooter with her husband Lai Yung-chi, 72, into the building on Thursday. Mr Lai said he was a retired builder who used to install electricity and water pipes in buildings, so he knew about building standards. The couple’s apartment, near the Hualien train station, was not badly damaged, he said.
“I wasn’t worried about our building, because I know they paid attention to earthquake resistance during its construction. I watched them pour the cement to make sure,” said Mr Lai. “There have been improvements. After every earthquake, they raise the standards a little more.”
It was possible to walk for city blocks without seeing clear signs of the powerful earthquake. Many buildings remained intact, some of them old and weather-worn. other modern, high-rise structures made of concrete and glass. Shops were open, selling coffee, ice cream and nuts. Next to the Uranus building, a popular night market with food stalls offering fried seafood, pasta and sweets operated until Thursday evening.
Earthquakes are inevitable in Taiwan, which sits on multiple active faults. Decades of work learned from other disasters, enforcing strict building codes and raising public awareness have helped its residents cope with frequent strong earthquakes.
Not far from the Uranus building, for example, officials had inspected a building with cracked columns and concluded it was unsafe to stay in. Residents were given 15 minutes to go inside and retrieve as many items as they could. Some ran outside with computers, while others threw bags of clothes from windows onto the street, which was also littered with broken glass and cement fragments from the earthquake.
One of its residents, Chen Ching-ming, a preacher at a nearby church, said he thought the building might collapse. He was able to salvage a television and some bedding, which were now sitting on the sidewalk, and was preparing to return for more. “I’m going to lose a lot of valuable things – a refrigerator, a microwave, a washing machine,” he said. “Everything goes.”
Seismic resistance requirements have been incorporated into Taiwan’s building codes since 1974. In the decades since, Taiwan’s building code writers have also applied lessons from other major earthquakes around the world, including Mexico and Los Angeles, to strengthen the Taiwan Code.
After more than 2,400 people were killed and at least 10,000 others injured during the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, thousands of buildings constructed before the earthquake were overhauled and strengthened. After another strong earthquake in 2018 in Hualien, the government ordered a new round of building inspections. Since then, many updates to the building code have been released.
“We have retrofitted more than 10,000 school buildings in the past 20 years,” said Chung-Che Chou, director general of the National Earthquake Engineering Research Center in Taipei.
The government has also helped strengthen private apartment buildings over the past six years by adding new steel supports and increasing the sizes of columns and beams, Dr Chu said. Not far from the partially collapsed buildings in Hualien, some of the older buildings that had been retrofitted this way survived Wednesday’s quake, he said.
The upshot of all this is that even Taiwan’s tallest skyscrapers can withstand regular seismic shaking. The capital’s most iconic building, Taipei 101, once the tallest building in the world, was designed to withstand hurricane-force winds and frequent earthquakes. But some experts say more needs to be done to strengthen or demolish substandard structures, and such calls have grown louder since the latest quake.
Taiwan has another important reason to protect its infrastructure: It is home to the majority of production for the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest maker of advanced computer chips. The supply chain for electronics from smartphones to cars to fighter jets relies on the output of TSMC’s factories, which make these chips in facilities that cost billions of dollars to build.
The 1999 earthquake also prompted TSMC to take extra measures to insulate its factories from earthquake damage. The company made significant structural adjustments and adopted new technologies such as early warning systems. When another major earthquake struck the southern city of Kaohsiung in February 2016, TSMC’s two nearby factories survived without structural damage.
Taiwan has made strides in its disaster response, experts say. In the first 24 hours after the earthquake, rescuers freed hundreds of people trapped in cars between rockfalls on the highway and trapped on mountain ledges in rock quarries.
“After years of hard work to build capacity, the island’s overall performance has improved significantly,” said Bruce Wong, an emergency management consultant in Hong Kong. Taiwan’s rescue teams specialize in complex efforts, he said, and he was also able to draw on the skills of trained volunteers.
Taiwan’s resilience also stems from a strong civil society involved in public disaster preparedness.
Ou Chi-hu, a member of a group of Taiwanese military veterans, was helping distribute water and other supplies at a school serving as a shelter for displaced residents in Hualien. He said people had learned from the 1999 earthquake how to be more prepared.
“They know to take refuge in a corner of the room or somewhere else safer,” he said. Many residents also keep a bag of essentials next to their beds and have fire extinguishers, he added.
Around him, a dozen or so other charities and groups offered residents food, money, advice and childcare. The Tzu Chi Foundation, a large Taiwanese Buddhist charity, provided tents for families to use inside the school hall so they could have more privacy. Huang Yu-chi, director of disaster relief at the foundation, said the nonprofits had learned from previous disasters.
“Now we are more systematic and have a better idea of disaster prevention,” Mr. Huang said.
Mike Ives contributed reporting from Seoul.
