Quake a Wake-Up Call for Taiwan’s Builders

As Taiwan tallies up the more than 2,000 lives lost and billions of dollars in damage wreaked by Tuesday’s earthquake, engineers are blaming poor design and shoddy construction for the collapse of many buildings--both old and new--that simply keeled over like dominoes.

But the earthquake has been a wake-up call for this densely populated island that is home to roughly two-thirds the number of people in California in an area less than one-tenth as large. Had the temblor been centered even 50 miles closer to the capital, Taipei, rather than in the less populated, mountainous interior 120 miles away, the death toll could easily have mounted into the hundreds of thousands and crippled the island, earthquake experts say.

“I believe the whole country would be down,” said Jenn Shin Hwang, division head of the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering in Taipei.

Such a doomsday scenario has led to heavy soul-searching by the government and the building industry about reforms. Previously, the island had been complacent about its vulnerability to large quakes, since in recent memory Taiwan has suffered only small quakes centered off the coast that have done little damage.

This time, though, three aftershocks of 6.8--strong quakes in their own right--have been recorded, including one this morning that killed two motorists in a landslide and collapsed several buildings weakened by Tuesday’s quake, killing a third person.

Prosecutors last week began getting tougher, arresting a contractor who built three buildings that collapsed in Touliu, burying 100 people. The buildings were reportedly made with substandard steel rods, and crumpled vegetable oil cans were said to have been substituted for bricks. Poor-quality construction is “a big problem,” said James Buu, a Justice Ministry spokesman.

To be sure, Taiwan’s overall construction quality is apparently far more advanced than that in Turkey, where an estimated 17,000 people were killed in last month’s earthquake. Most of Taiwan’s buildings are made of steel and concrete to withstand the typhoons that regularly batter the country. In addition, Taiwan two years ago adopted earthquake engineering codes as stringent as those in the U.S. and Japan.

However, many of the nation’s buildings were constructed before those codes were adopted, and many still contain design flaws and shoddy construction, experts say. “Leakages” in the three important phases of building--design, construction and enforcement--led to many of the problems, said Wu Mon Teh, president of the Taiwan Structural Engineers Assn.

“The government requests reviews, but in actuality, they don’t have the ability to do this type of work,” Wu said.

Residents of Tali, where at least half a dozen similar-looking 10- to 12-story apartment buildings said to be about a decade old tipped over like a house of cards, couldn’t agree more. They blame the government for failing to enforce codes.

Said Sun Hse Ping, grieving for his 19-year-old daughter, who was trapped in one such building and ultimately died: “I want the world to know that the Taiwan government may be famous for its exports, but the most important things--the rescue of its people and the quality of its construction--are so bad, they cost people’s lives.”

The buildings that toppled in Tali were constructed on soft land. Residents of at least two of them had complained to fire officials about water several feet deep accumulating in the basements and further weakening the foundations, but the fire department didn’t respond to those complaints.

One striking thing about the city is that, apart from the toppled high-rises, it is relatively undamaged.

Despite the tragedy, some victims say the local government isn’t accepting much of the blame. Resident Paul Hse was appalled at the attitude of the mayor, who was surveying the destruction after the quake. When Hse complained abut the poor quality of the structure where he had lived, he recalls, the mayor’s response was to ask, “Why did you buy such a poor-quality place?”

“Because the government approved it,” Hse shot back.

Engineers who assessed the damage in the hardest-hit towns say they were shocked and saddened by the quality of the buildings they saw toppled and crumbled.

A prime culprit: weak vertical columns spaced farther apart than they should have been, which led the floors of many buildings to be sandwiched or the structures to fall.

Tseng Yi Ping, director of the Taiwan Professional Civil Engineers Assn., said he was struck by how many structures contained poor-quality concrete, detectable even without testing. “High-quality concrete costs more,” he said, but is essential to a building’s strength.

As a result, one-third of the buildings Tseng observed on a tour of some of the most heavily damaged towns were destroyed. And he estimates that half of those remaining will need to be rebuilt because of structural damage.

Another big problem is a design element known as a “soft story” that is ubiquitous in Taiwan. The first floor of buildings with this flaw--the floor that takes the heaviest damage in a quake--is built much taller than other floors and with less support, often to provide better views or glass for a storefront. But that means insufficient reinforcement in walls and ceilings, said Jenn of the earthquake engineering research center.

The number of convenience stores flattened, entombing numerous workers on duty at 1:40 a.m. when the quake hit, offered grim evidence of the hazard. Because of Taiwan’s population density, there are few single-family houses or free-standing franchises. Hence, most convenience stores are framed in glass and located on the first floors of apartment buildings and office towers.

No amount of earthquake-proofing is likely to save a building if it is in the wrong place--above an area where tectonic plates shift. In hard-hit Taichung County, for example, the earthquake jolted a long vein of earth upward like one end of a seesaw, so that it rose about 15 feet. Everything along it was tilted, from buildings to roads.

“If your house is located on one of these during an earthquake, there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Jenn. “Just say, ‘God help me.’ ”

That is why site selection is very important. Buildings shouldn’t be located on weak soil or too near a fault. The problem, says Tseng of the engineers association, is that researchers only knew the location of some of the faults in Taiwan.

“We didn’t expect a strong earthquake, so we didn’t put money into finding them,” he said. “Now we can locate them--but it’s too late.”

*SURVIVORS RESCUED

Two men, reportedly brothers, are pulled alive from the rubble of a Taipei hotel. A10