JAPAN: Tremors of Worry from Massive Taiwan Quake

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 22 1999 (IPS) - The pictures of devastation from the massive quake that hit Taiwan Tuesday has shaken the confidence of the Japanese who, along with the Turkish people, live in the two most earthquake-prone countries in the world.

“If a quake the size that shook Taiwan hits Tokyo, the world’s largest city, damage and deaths could much worse,” commented chief earthquake surveyor Yoshimitsu Okada, at the Japan Disaster Prevention Science and Technology Institute.

Japan lies in the “ring of fire”, the name given to cover the Pacific belt of countries that include Taiwan, the Philippines and California in the United States, and through which fault lines that store energy run through.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the death toll from Taiwan’s temblor, which measured 7.6 on the open-ended Richter scale, exceeded 1,700. More than 4,000 people were injured in the island’s strongest quake since 1935.

Frenzied rescue efforts were continuing, though hampered by the thousands of aftershocks felt in the island. The quake’s epicentre was near the central city of Taichung, 200 km south of the capital Taipei.

Geologists say the same Pacific Ocean plate whose movement caused the Taiwan quake is the same one that exerts pressure on Japan.

In Japan, long used to earthquakes, scientists have predicted that a large temblor with a magnitude of 7.4 on the Richter sales, could occur within the next 40-50 years and hit the Tokaido area, in Shizuoka prefecture which is around 150 km south of Tokyo.

Still, the possibility of a major quake hitting Tokyo has not been ruled out. The Japanese media, for instance, quotes scientists who talk about a 40 percent possibility that a quake exceeding magnitude six could hit Tokyo in the future.

Unlike many other countries however, Japan is more well-quipped to deal with earthquakes.

Indeed, it has spent millions of dollars on earthquake-related technology and has built the world’s most extensive earthquake observation network.

But Okada acknowledges that scientists are nowhere near be able to clearly warn people of a possible temblor.

“The lesson is clear. We have to focus on being better prepared. To be able to rely on predictions is a long way off,” he explained.

Tokyo, a city of 12 million people that swells to almost double during the day as people flock in from the suburbs, represents a nightmarish scenario in case of a strong earthquake.

Here, buildings and houses have risen like mushrooms as a result of high economic growth during the years of Japan’s post World War II economic growth..

“There are few parks and open spaces as every inch of land was taken advantage of for buildings,” Okada noted, thus increasing the risk of damage and loss of life from earthquakes.

“As in Taiwan and Kobe, we found that the highest number of fatalities were in houses and not buildings. Fires, another major cause of deaths, could raze hundreds of houses when a city is as densely populated as Tokyo.”

More than 6,000 people died in the January 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe, southwest of Tokyo. That quake measured 7.2 on the Richter scale.

The worst-hit areas in a big city are expected to be places in the older parts. In Tokyo, the densely populated downtown area is dotted with old houses and poorly constructed buildings that lie almost touching one another.

These buildings were constructed more than 50 years ago and are examples of lax construction standards, according to experts. With the focus on quick economic recovery in earlier decades, less money was spent on ensuring quality of construction.

At the time, government officials turned a blind eye to these issues, caught up in the fever of rebuilding a war-torn city.

Experts say that today however, new high-rises are expected to survive the shaking caused by a temblor on a scale of 7 on the Richter scale, because higher construction standards have been followed for them.

This is the result of years of expensive investment into developing new technology that allow high-rise structures to sway with the movement of tremors, rather than collapse as is the conventional form.

This type of construction costs twice to three times that of a building built without this expertise — a reason why this method is still restricted to the posh, gleaming compounds that house thousands of employees in private companies.

“It’s the poorer areas that are usually is hit the worst as proved in Kobe,” says Okada. “People thought their homes would be the safest, but found out that things were the opposite.”

Perhaps the biggest lesson the Japanese have learned from the Taiwan and Turkey quakes as well as Kobe, is that nothing is absolutely safe if a large tremor hits.

As a result the government has come up with more discussions on disaster prevention, among them efforts to bolster the role of Japan’s Self Defense Forces to help in rescue operations.

On Japan’s official Disaster Prevention Day, Sept 2, more than 5.7 million people, including firefighters, medical personnel and those in charge of securing lifelines such as electricity and gas, participated in earthquake drills across the nation.

More than 500 people walked 7 km toward the center of Tokyo, where utilities are expected to survive earthquakes.

Large-scale exacuation drills are also conducted in Japan annually.

Despite Japan’s relativeness ability to cope with earthquakes, “it’s really not possible to absolutely sure”, remarked Okada. “We have developed such a huge, dangerous city (Tokyo) to reach our greedy economic goals that it’s too frightening to even think of the consequences in the event of a strong earthquake.”