The largest earthquake in decades that shook Taiwan did not break her and highlighted her preparation. These are the lessons learned

Hualien, Taiwan () – Wu was preparing breakfast for guests at the small hotel he runs in Taiwan’s Hualien County when the shelves around him shook violently and the mountain behind his house roared.

Fearing that the building would collapse, he rushed to get his guests outside to safety. On the other side of the river, steep slopes fell away from the mountains, the air was filled with clouds of dust.

But Wu’s house was barely damaged by the 7.4 magnitude earthquake on April 3, the most powerful in the last 25 years in Taiwansomething he attributes to a broader effort to make the island more earthquake-resistant.

“After the 1999 earthquake, our Government carried out a comprehensive review of building codes, and all buildings constructed must use new technologies that make them more resistant to earthquakes,” he explains.

15 years ago, when he began building his two-story guesthouse near the entrance to Taroko Gorge — a national park famous for its steep, marble-walled canyons — Wu had to get government approval to prepare it for earthquakes. .

And experts say changes like this have helped the tremor-prone island avoid mass casualties in quakes like Wednesday’s.

“I feel very lucky,” Wu says of the little damage caused by the strong earthquake. “It’s not too serious.”

The situation is similar in Hualien, a city just 18 kilometers from the epicenter, which seemed surprisingly calm the day after the quake.

Shops and restaurants have reopened, as have fruit, vegetable and snack stalls. Train services to the city, suspended as a precaution on Wednesday, have resumed and are running as planned.

The strongest sign of the earthquake is a 10-story red brick tower in the city center, which is leaning precariously at a 45-degree angle after its ground floor collapsed. Excavators have piled rubble at the base of the Uranus building to reinforce it.

Emergency crews have begun repairing dozens of damaged buildings and demolishing four deemed unsalvageable. But for the most part, the city of 100,000 on Taiwan’s picturesque eastern coast has emerged unscathed.

This is not to underestimate the force of the earthquake. Taiwanese seismologists describe the tremor as having an energy equivalent to 32 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. It shook the entire island of Taiwan and was felt as far away as Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Chong, a 52-year-old housewife, said she had experienced many earthquakes in Hualien. “But the magnitude of this earthquake was very frightening,” he said. “I have never experienced such a large earthquake in my 50 years here in Hualien.”

Wednesday’s earthquake shook more areas of Taiwan more intensely than any quake since 1999, when a magnitude 7.7 tremor shook the center of the island, causing 2,400 deaths and 10,000 injuries.

But this time, the number of victims is much lower. As of Thursday, 10 people had died and just over 1,000 were injured, while 25 remained missing, according to authorities.

“It’s a pretty miraculous result,” said Daniel Aldrich, a professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University who studies the resilience of cities, calling the toll “a very low death toll from a strong, powerful earthquake.” near an urban center.”

“The other catastrophes around 7.5 (magnitude) have caused many more victims than we have seen so far in Taiwan,” he said, citing the tens of thousands of deaths during previous earthquakes in Haiti, India and China.

This was the rescue of an unconscious man after the Taiwan earthquake

Wednesday’s earthquake shook Taiwan’s rural east coast. Most of the population lives in the west of the island, where the largest cities, an extensive high-speed rail network and much of the industrial heartland are located.

Most of the destruction and deaths occurred in remote rural areas of Hualien County.

Most of the victims died outdoors from falling rocks or landslides. According to authorities, four of them were hiking in the Taroko Gorge, four others died on mountain roads and another was working in a remote quarry.

Until now, only one person had died in a collapsed building: the Uranus building in central Hualien. He initially escaped, but returned to rescue his cat, affiliate SET reported.

Taiwan’s recent push on preparedness stems from the hard lessons learned from the devastating earthquake 25 years ago, experts say.

When the earthquake hit in 1999, Taiwan was unprepared, Aldrich says, citing corruption in the construction sector, a lack of building standards and inadequate coordination of rescue efforts.

That earthquake left more than 100,000 buildings completely or partially collapsed across Taiwan, including almost 300 schools. Buildings also collapsed in the capital, Taipei, about 160 km from the epicenter.

“What we’ve seen since then is massive improvements across the board, what I would call a top-down set of responses over a bottom-up set of responses,” Aldrich said.