Today’s quake and 921

As you’re probably aware, there was a big earthquake in Taiwan today. Most of the news stories mention that it’s the biggest earthquake Taiwan has experienced in 25 years. At first glance, this one looks almost as big as that one. The September 21, 1999 earthquake was a 7.3 and this one is being reported by local media as 7.2. (The international media is reporting this one at 7.4, but I also remember the 921 earthquake was initially reported as a 7.6.) I was here on 921, and that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. (To answer the musical question, I will never forget the 21^st night of September.) So I want to make a few comments about how that experience was different from this earthquake.

The 921 quake was much more destructive. There were two things that are not reflected in that 7.3 number. First, it lasted a long time. Earthquakes generally have some softer periods has some harder periods, but the really intense shaking only lasts 10 or 20 seconds. The intense part of the 921 earthquake lasted well over a minute. Second, most earthquakes shake side to side. The 921 quake shook up and down, which is a much more devastating movement. Initial reports are that four people have died in this earthquake. More than 2000 people died in the 921 quake. We are seeing pictures of the same few buildings that are precariously leaning over. In 1999, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of buildings that were structurally ruined and had to be torn down. Actually, many of them didn’t need to be torn down because the earthquake completely flattened them.

My personal experience was also very different. Both times I was sleeping, and the earthquake woke me up. In the 921 quake, I was on the third floor of a fairly old four-story building, the kind you see all over the place in Taiwan. I had a few 3-foot high bookshelves, and they slammed violently against the wall repeatedly. It was the only time I have ever been genuinely afraid that the building might collapse. I had post-traumatic stress every aftershock for the next few weeks. Out of instinct, I went across the street to the NCCU campus and my unofficial home at the Election Study Center. About 10 of us gathered there and spent the next few hours reassuring each other that we would be OK. At that time, the ESC was still in an old, dilapidated building, so we had to run outside into the rain every time there was an aftershock. The power had gone out completely but one person had a battery powered transistor radio (wow, that sounds ancient now!) and said that there had been a report of an explosion at the distillery in Puli (Nantou). I thought, holy cow, this earthquake was so big that they felt our earthquake 200 kilometers away! Later, I learned that we had felt their earthquake, not the other way around. It was a massive quake.

This morning there was some significant shaking, but none of my 6-foot bookcases banged against the walls. Nothing fell off our shelves, and we didn’t have any damage. My wife and I didn’t get out of bed, and when the shaking stopped, we went back to sleep. Our building has a frame of steel girders, not the old-fashioned rebar and cement, so my experience this time might be different because I was in a sturdier building. That said, I never felt anxious, much less afraid, this time.

After the 921 earthquake, the power went out all over Taiwan. One of the electric towers sending power from central Taiwan to the north slid off a mountain, and it took several weeks to repair it. All the available electricity was reserved for the highest priority sites, such as hospitals and military bases. In late September, it was still too hot to sleep without at least an electric fan until 2:00 or 3:00 AM, so everyone was groggy and grumpy for the next few weeks. This time, my electricity didn’t go out at all. Some people lost power, but I don’t think anybody lost power for very long.

This is a political blog, so you’re probably wondering what kind of political impact this earthquake will have. I confidently predict that it will have almost no impact at all. This earthquake took place three months after the presidential election. The 921 earthquake took place six months before a presidential election. There were a lot of people who thought that the earthquake would be the defining issue of that election. After all, it upended hundreds of thousands of people’s lives. In Nantou, county magistrate Peng Pai-hsien 彭百顯 turned his back on a career of opposition politics to endorse the KMT presidential candidate Lien Chan. Lien was still the premier at the time, and Nantou desperately needed relief. In Taipei, the city government could post a deputy mayor at the single collapsed building; Nantou didn’t have enough county government employees to post a civil servant of any rank at every collapsed building. Nantou was also among the poorest county governments. The legislature quickly passed an emergency relief act, and Peng needed to be sure Nantou would get its fair share. He may have also made a political calculation that the earthquake would be the turning point in Lien’s presidential campaign. Even though Lien’s polling numbers were miserable, usually under 10% (Soong routinely had 40% and Chen usually had around 20%), there were many people who just could not fathom the KMT losing the presidency. Surely, they could mobilize enough votes with their vaunted political machine. The earthquake provided an ideal opportunity for Premier Lien to hand out lots and lots of cash in the crucial battlegrounds of central Taiwan. It didn’t work out that way. Six months later, the earthquake had faded into the background as a political issue. If you look at the election returns, is hard to discern which areas were hit hardest by the earthquakes and which areas were relatively spared. Surveys also failed to identify the earthquake as an important factor. If that traumatic experience had almost no electoral impact, it’s hard to imagine that this one will matter very much with the next selection more than 2 ½ years away.

[Edit: As a reader points out, Lien was NOT premier at the time. He stepped down from that post in 1997. Vincent Siew (Hsiao Wan-chang 蕭萬長 was the premier. Lien was VP. Still, he could have used the opportunity to go to all kinds of places and represent the government handing out cash. He didn’t do that at all.]

Another difference is in the international media coverage. Because China has become such an inhospitable place for international media, there are now many correspondents based here in Taiwan. They were right on the scene and able to report this story quite thoroughly. In 1999, there were very few international reporters based here in Taiwan. If my memory is correct, CNN flew Mike Chinoy in from Hong Kong. He went from the airport straight to downtown Taipei, reported on the single building that had collapsed there, and turned around and went back to Hong Kong. CNN completely missed the main story, which was in central Taiwan. That’s what the international news environment was like a generation ago; this sloppy reporting wasn’t unusual. The quality of international news coverage is much, much better now.

A final consideration is that Taiwan is more prepared to deal with this kind of natural disaster now than it was 25 years ago. In the aftermath of that disaster, building codes were rewritten and more stringently enforced. One of the worst stories from that quake involved an elementary school that collapsed because some of the pillars were filled with empty salad oil tin cans instead of solid concrete. More prosaically, there were a lot of buildings that collapsed between the second and third floors. When you build with rebar, you are supposed to overlap the rods so that there is not a weak point. However, rebar is expensive so many builders ignored this requirement. The standard rebar piece is about two floors high, so there was a weak point between the second and third floor which the earthquake mercilessly exposed. A lot of the shoddy housing stock from the 1960s and 1970s has now been replaced with higher quality buildings.

Let’s end this piece by going back to electricity. Someone just sent me a very interesting article. About 300,000 households lost power this time compared to 6.5 million in 1999. Still, today’s earthquake did knock several generators and transformers offline, accounting for 3.2 million kilowatts, more than 10% of the total supply at the time. Why didn’t this overload the system and lead to a more widespread system failure? This article argues solar power came to the rescue. At 7:50 (just before the earthquake), solar power accounted for 2.9 million kilowatts (10.8% of the total supply). At 8:00 AM (2 minutes after the earthquake), that figure had risen to 3.3 million kilowatts (12.2%). At 8:10, solar power provided 3.7 million kilowatts (13.2%). At 8:40, it was 4.8 million kilowatts (13.2%). By 11:40 (when most of the damage had been repaired and the regular sources were coming back online), solar power provided 8.4 million kilowatts (25.8%). In short, the government’s drive to transition to green energy has had the added bonus of making the grid more resilient!