TAICHUNG, Taiwan -- As Taiwan tallies up the 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. 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 some heavy soul-searching by the government and the building industry about necessary 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.
Prosecutors last week began getting tougher, arresting a contractor who built three buildings that collapsed in Toului, burying 100 people. The buildings were reportedly made with substandard steel rods and crumpled vegetable oil cans are said to have been substituted for bricks. Poor-quality construction is "a big problem," said James Buu, a Justice Ministry spokesman. "The contractor didn't stick to the requirements and replaced concrete with other stuff."
To be sure, Taiwan's overall construction quality is apparently far more advanced than 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 United States 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, building 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 Association.
"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 the 19-year-old daughter who was trapped in one 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 built on soft land. In addition, residents of at least two had complained to local fire officials about water several feet deep accumulating in the basements, further weakening the foundations, but the Fire Department didn't respond to those pre-quake complaints.
One striking thing about the city is that, apart from the toppled high-rises, it is relatively undamaged.
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 buildings to be overturned completely.
Tseng Yi Ping, director of the Taiwan Professional Civil Engineers Association, 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.