The destruction in Tainan following a strong earthquake on Saturday was largely due to a geological factor called the “site effect,” which was why the city sustained more serious damage than the area of the quake’s epicenter, Central Weather Bureau (CWB) Director-General Shin Tzay-chyn (辛在勤) said.
Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃), the center of the magnitude 6.4 earthquake, hardly suffered any damage, while parts of neighboring Tainan were devastated, Shin said.
He said most earthquakes in southern Taiwan are concentrated along a fault line stretching from Jiasian (甲仙) in Kaohsiung to Sinhua (新化) in Tainan.
The Jiasian quake in 2010, for example, occurred along that fault line, about 10km from Meinong, and was of the same magnitude as Saturday’s temblor, Shin said.
There were also other similarities, he said.
Both earthquakes were centered in a mountainous area at a shallow depth — the one on Saturday at 16.7km below the surface and the Jiasian quake at 22.6km, he said.
However, Shin said that while the Jiasian quake caused no damage or casualties, Saturday’s quake toppled several structures in Tainan, including a 17-story residential complex, killing at least 38 people.
Lin Tzu-wei (林祖慰), head of the bureau’s Earthquake Forecast Center, said the Meinong earthquake was more destructive mainly because of Tainan’s soft soil.
Surface ground motion can be strongly amplified in such geological conditions, which are known as the “site effect,” Lin said.
The seismic waves in Saturday’s earthquake apparently traveled northwest from the epicenter to Tainan through the soft soil in the Chianan Plain, which stretches from Tainan to Chiayi County to the north, Lin said.
He said structural factors in the city also contributed to the devastation caused by the earthquake.
SEND A MESSAGE: Sinking the amphibious assault ship, the lead warship of its class, is meant to show China the US Navy is capable of sinking their ships, an analyst said The US and allied navies plan to sink a 40,000-tonne ship at the latest Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise to simulate defeating a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan. This year’s RIMPAC — the 29th iteration of the world’s largest naval exercise — involves the US, 28 partners, more than 25,000 personnel, 40 warships, three submarines and more than 150 aircraft operating in and around Hawaii from yesterday to Aug. 1, the US Navy said in a press release. The major components of the event include multidomain warfare exercises in multiship surface engagements, anti-submarine warfare and multi-axis defense of a carrier strike
Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China when traveling in countries with close ties to Beijing, Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said on Friday. Chen’s comments came after China on Friday last week announced new judicial guidelines targeting Taiwanese independence advocates. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Djibouti are among the countries where Taiwanese could risk being extradited to China, he said. The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday elevated the travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau to “orange” after Beijing announced its guidelines to “severely punish Taiwanese independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession.” Extradition treaties
The airspace around Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) is to be closed for an hour on July 25 and July 23 respectively, due to the Han Kuang military exercises, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. The annual exercise is to be held on Taiwan proper and its outlying islands from July 22 to 26. During last year’s exercise, the military conducted anti-aircraft landing drills at the Taoyuan airport for the first time, for which a one-hour no-fly ban was issued. Based on a live-fire bulletin sent out by the Maritime and Port Bureau, the nation’s
CROSS-BORDER CRIME: The suspects cannot be charged with cybercrime in Indonesia as their targets were in Malaysia, an Indonesian immigration director said Indonesian immigration authorities have detained 103 Taiwanese after a raid at a villa on Bali, officials said yesterday. They were accused of misusing their visas and residence permits, and are suspected of possible cybercrimes, Safar Muhammad Godam, director of immigration supervision and enforcement at the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights told reporters at a news conference. “The 103 foreign nationals stayed at the villa and conducted suspicious activities, which we suspect are activities related to cybercrime activities,” he said, presenting laptops and routers at the news conference. Godam said Indonesian authorities cannot charge them with conducting cybercrime. “During the inspection, we