The 2022 September 7.2 earthquake in Taiwan: What have we learned since then? An update on seismic retrofits for Taiwan’s high-rise buildings

The east coast sits on some of the biggest fault lines, so it is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes. A person was killed in a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in September, 2022, south of Taitung.

The earthquake occurred at a relatively shallow 35 kilometres deep, resulting in stronger tremors than those produced by quakes that erupt farther below the Earth’s surface. Authorities issued warnings in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines, but later changed their minds. A wave of 30centimetre-high rolled into Yonaguni Island after the earthquake in Japan. The earthquake’s effects were also reportedly felt in parts of mainland China.

The last time Taiwan experienced an earthquake of this magnitude was in 1999 when more than 2,000 people died in a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that hit central Taiwan and caused 100,000 buildings to collapse. Post-quake audits found shoddily enforced building codes and poor quality materials.

The people on the island are still talking about how bad the earthquake could have been.

As of Thursday local time, authorities say nine people were killed during the quake and just over 1,000 people were injured. Train service through the epicenter was restored within 24 hours.

Daniel Aldrich is a political science professor at Northeastern University who studies earthquake resilience and he says it is quite remarkable that there were no reported injuries from the earthquake. Haiti had far more casualties than India and Taiwan had very few earthquakes.

Taiwan started a number of attempts at top down and bottom up responses to shocks, after reorganizing its disaster response. There’s a direct outcome of the previous response and criticism that we’re seeing.

Taiwan earthquakes have given a learning experience. The design of the collapsed high-rise building favored big, open lobbies after the deadly 2016 earthquake. Such designs left its bases weak, which were in part to blame for the higher number of fatalities and collapses.

In the last few years, we have made a lot of improvements to our infrastructure, according to an NPR interview with a civil engineer.

There are more robust steel rebar designs embedded in reinforced concrete, and regular earthquake drills for the general public, among the updated codes.

The retrofit for the whole schools is the most important task we have done.

There are a lot of things that show newer infrastructure or retrofits did better during an earthquake than older non-retrofitted buildings.

A multi-story building listed to be in the center of the city was damaged and a huge mound of dirt was placed in front of it to prop it up before it was demolished later this week. The people had been removed from the building on Wednesday. The buildings around it remained intact.