Don't make your home a death trap!
Worse still, says Li Tiao-yang, manager of the construction division of Shin Kong Life Insurance Company, "The moment many people buy a flat, they go on a grand renovation spree, and start ripping out walls and reducing or removing columns. Some of them even don't mind breaking into the services shaft, so that their upstairs and downstairs neighbors end up not even getting a proper TV signal." This is something many residents of high-rise apartment blocks have personally experienced. In the company's own 51-storey commercial tower block in central Taipei, lease contracts explicitly stipulate that before making any alterations, tenants must have them vetted by Shin Kong. Otherwise, "Some of them would put in new partition walls which block the effective range of the sprinklers, or shut up the fire hydrants in the storeroom, or even divide the emergency exits off into individual rooms." All these anomalies can be summed up in one phrase: "They're oblivious to danger!"
Some interior decorators will tell their clients: "Don't worry, I've looked at the drawings" (meaning the structural drawings of building). But unfortunately, the simplistic black-and-white notion that when making alterations, "you can do anything so long as you don't touch the main structural members" doesn't hold water. Especially in older urban areas such as Taipei City, most buildings were put up in the 1970s, when building regulations were less strict. They depend for their structural safety margin not on their columns, but on their brick walls, because as these walls move they generate friction and heat, absorbing and dissipating seismic energy.
"But today far too many of the brick walls have been torn out. When there is a big earthquake, what will be there to resist it?" Wang Sen-yuan cannot help frowning with worry.
Many people ascribe the serious damage to schools in the areas worst hit on 21 September to corrupt collusion between contractors and officials in the execution of public works projects. Some corruption may indeed exist, but in fact the nub of the problem lies in the type of structural design generally chosen for classroom buildings in Taiwan's elementary and high schools.
Wang Ching-chung, director of the Department of Construction Engineering at National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, says that newer teaching buildings have "cantilevered" arcades (walkways covered by overhanging upper floors, without supporting columns on the outer side), and large classrooms without partition walls, but with windows and doors all along both sides. Columns are "trapped" between window sills, creating a "short column" effect. As for older buildings, just as with many older houses in small towns, when the original two-storey structures at many schools were found to be too small, third and sometimes even fourth storeys were built on top. With such inherently inadequate structures or botched additions, it is hardly surprising that buildings collapsed.
Killer display cabinets
The 21 September quake did indeed bring into the open many problems which had previously been overlooked or ignored. Huang Jenn-shin of the NCREE calls on local governments throughout Taiwan to grasp the opportunity to perform an all-round safety assessment of existing buildings, and then target priority sites-such as schools, hospitals, police stations, fire stations and shopping centers-for strengthening. But they should also strictly enforce building regulations in new buildings. Only by proper supervision of both old and new can there be any hope of reducing casualties to a minimum when the next major earthquake strikes.
The 7,000-member International Search and Rescue Association of China, whose bright red uniforms could be seen in all the stricken areas, is the non-governmental organization which received the most praise in the aftermath of the disaster. But Commandant Lu Cheng-tsung laments that disaster preparation in Taiwan is neither detailed nor comprehensive enough. For example, he says, when rescue teams in American cities arrive at a collapsed building, at the touch of a computer key they can consult the building's complete structural drawings, and see exactly where the bedrooms, stairwells and service ducts are, to assist their search. But in Taiwan, a building's drawings may be with the residents' committee, with the construction company or with the local government's building inspectorate, so finding them takes time. As to whether the building was really built according to the drawings, and whether owners have made structural alterations, that is anybody's guess.
A building's structural framework is the skeleton which holds it up, but the internal layout and even the arrangement of furniture can also provide opportunities for survival, or alternatively turn homes and offices into death traps. The story of the Sun brothers surviving in the collapsed Tunghsing building in Taipei City thanks to a big old refrigerator was widely reported, but few people are aware that in the stricken areas many of the dead were crushed by falling heavy furniture and electrical appliances, or were trapped by overturned furniture which blocked their escape routes.
In particular, with Taiwan's high property prices and limited space, both in homes and offices many people are in the habit of stacking furniture high; some cabinets have large areas of glass or are filled with fragile knick-knacks, while others are top-heavy and easily toppled by a quake.
To prevent this, "preferably the sections of large cabinets should be fixed together top and bottom and side to side, and they should be braced against the ceiling so that they don't have room to sway or topple," says Julian Chen, vice president for production at well-known office furniture manufacturers UB Office Systems Inc.
Furthermore, many companies take a shine to the spacious main corridors in their office premises, and cannot resist lining them with storage cabinets. If the drawers in these cabinets have no catches to prevent them rolling open, and are made of steel, with sharp corners, and especially if there is no emergency lighting in the corridors, then one can easily imagine how, when an earthquake hits, no matter whether the drawers slide out or the cabinets themselves fall over, even people lucky enough to escape will be tripped up and suffer cuts, while the unlucky ones will find their route blocked and will not make it out alive. (See "Five Steps for Protecting Yourself in an Earthquake.") Many companies are also in the habit of joining together room dividers in long rows. If one panel a meter wide by one-and-a-half meters high weighs 20-odd kilograms, then if an earthquake brought a row of them down on top of you, could you escape without injury?
Safer public places
Public facilities are an important component in creating a safe living environment. The recent Californian earthquake caused a train derailment in the Mojave Desert. How safe are Taipei's MRT lines?
"We have a link to the Central Weather Bureau, and we receive data within one minute after an earthquake." Mr. Tung, a senior engineer at Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation's central control room, states that if this data indicates that the earthquake's intensity in Taipei was less than four, trains will continue at reduced speed to the next station, where they will wait while station staff and maintenance personnel inspect the track. If no fallen debris, fallen electrical cables or other abnormal conditions are found, then after five minutes the trains can proceed again with caution. If the quake's intensity is greater than four, trains will not be allowed to run again until a more detailed general inspection has been carried out.
But if trains don't stop until the earthquake is over, what happens if the city is hit by a super-quake of magnitude seven or above? Would trains traveling at high speed be derailed? "I don't think so," says Mr. Tung: the Taipei MRT is fitted with automatic protection systems, and if the rails buckle or debris falls on the track, the trackside signaling system will immediately signal an abnormal condition, causing trains to brake automatically. Thus a derailment at the trains' full speed of 80 kilometers per hour is very unlikely.
After the 21 September earthquake, disaster prevention measures at large shopping centers also came under scrutiny. Li Kuang-jung, manager of Sogo Department Store's promotions department, says that the biggest worry for large stores is the power cuts and fires which may follow a quake. Hence Sogo has its own large diesel-powered generator which starts up within five to ten seconds after the electricity goes off, to restore 20-30% of normal power. Staff can then use the public address system to guide customers to the emergency exits. Also, the valves controlling the building's gas supply will shut off immediately if a leak is detected.
Next time let's be ready. . . .
No matter how comprehensive disaster prevention measures may be, they can never cover every eventuality, and this makes constant vigilance and awareness of risks all the more important. During the power cuts following the 21 September earthquake, many shopkeepers put up candles on their shelves and carried on trading as usual, while some restaurateurs put a candlestick on every table and began offering "candlelight rendezvous." "Everyone seemed to have forgotten that there was still a constant danger of aftershocks. What if several candles fell over all at once and set the place on fire?" worried Ms. Chen, a media worker.
People are forgetful, and as the nightmare of 21 September fades from memory, getting citizens to remain prudent and vigilant will be easier said than done. A recent survey in Japan, which had been on "full alert" after the Kobe earthquake, revealed that 34% of the public had made no special preparations whatsoever for a major earthquake-a full ten percentage points more than in a survey two years ago. Those who were unprepared mostly offered the excuse that they didn't think they would be "that unlucky." But if the dangers we have all been warned about today become the killers of tomorrow, there will be no point in bewailing the cruelty of nature-we will have only ourselves to blame.