TAIPEI, Taiwan — The magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on Friday has killed more than 1,600 people and injured more than 3,400 and was felt as far as Thailand, Laos and southern China.
The earthquake originated near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city of about 1.5 million, from rubbing tectonic plates along the Sagaing fault, which runs through the center of the country. More than 600 miles away in Bangkok, the Thai capital, buildings bucked. Rescue efforts in the region have been hampered by collapsed buildings and bridges and roads that now lead nowhere, and aftershocks continue to keep residents on edge.
The disaster has — not surprisingly — raised questions about earthquake preparedness in Southeast Asia and farther afield in places such as Taiwan, which is noted for being very proactive, and California, which is in the midst of an earthquake “drought.”
The Times spoke with Nurul Alam, a resilient infrastructure specialist who worked at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center in Bangkok, about what the aftermath indicates about disaster preparedness in Asia and beyond.
How prepared was Myanmar for the earthquake?
In 2014, Alam conducted seismic risk assessments in Mandalay, near the epicenter of the recent earthquake. Given the city’s geographic proximity to a major fault line, his team had recommended that the government update its building codes to make structures more resilient and improve seismic contingency planning.
“I believe if they would have followed the recommendations, there would have been less trouble now, but I don’t think that that happened,” he said. “It was already risky. The buildings were vulnerable over there anyways, and people knew that this would come.”
Myanmar is also particularly vulnerable given that the country has been embroiled in civil war since 2021. Millions of people have been displaced, and government and medical infrastructure has been crippled. Although information from Myanmar is tightly controlled by the ruling military junta, aid workers and scientific organizations estimate the devastation to be enormous.
How prepared was Thailand for the earthquake?
Thailand updated its earthquake building codes in 2007 and released new regulations on seismic-resistant design in 2021. Most of the building damage from Friday’s quake was nonstructural, hitting partition walls, fixtures, electricity and plumbing, Alam said. Structural beams, columns and slabs held up, despite extreme shaking and swaying of some high-rises.
That indicates to Alam that Thailand has high compliance with its building codes. However, he said it seemed that residents were not well prepared in terms of how to respond and that contingency planning could help alleviate disruptions to roads and public services. “What is commendable in Thailand is that whatever is in the building code, I think most of the structures followed the code, and that’s why the devastation was not that high,” he said.
More than a dozen people died in Bangkok due to the earthquake, and one 30-story building under construction collapsed. Efforts to find about 80 missing people are ongoing.
How does the response compare with other places in Asia?
Often areas with more earthquakes have stronger building codes and contingency plans, so they are less affected by serious tremors, Alam said. Japan, for example, has strict seismic codes and early warning systems due to frequent earthquakes.
Taiwan, another earthquake-prone island, takes similar precautions, which helped mitigate death and damage last year during its strongest earthquake in a quarter of a century. The magnitude 7.4 temblor, which could be felt as far as Shanghai, killed about 18 people. A day before the earthquake in Myanmar, Taiwan’s government staged civil defense drills on how to respond to a major disaster.
Some countries, Alam said, could do more to prepare.
Turkey, which experienced a magnitude 7.8 temblor in 2023, has stronger earthquake codes than Bangkok, he explained, but lower compliance in terms of construction. He said buildings are also more vulnerable in India, Nepal and Bangladesh. One risk assessment he worked on in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, estimated that about 70,000 structures or buildings would collapse from an earthquake of similar magnitude.
What does this mean for earthquake-prone places such as California?
California would probably fare better in an earthquake than many Asian countries because of its experience with natural disasters and its strong building codes and compliance, Alam said. He added that areas at high risk of earthquakes in the U.S. also practice drills more frequently than places such as Bangkok.
“California’s seismic history has actually paved the way for all this information that we have right now,” Alam said. “I think Bangkok should learn from them.”
Los Angeles has touted its sweeping earthquake safety ordinance — the nation’s toughest, which requires thousands of buildings to be evaluated and strengthened if necessary. In 2015, the city passed a landmark regulation requiring an estimated 15,000 buildings be retrofitted so they will better withstand violent shaking, and in 2022, The Times reported that more than 8,000 seismically vulnerable buildings had been retrofitted across the city at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion. Last year, however, The Times reported that L.A.’s building retrofit data have been outdated for years.
What else can cities do to better prepare?
Alam said detailed seismic hazard and risk assessments can help determine whether the standards for constructing new buildings need to be improved. These surveys should be done early, he said, because it can take years to change building codes, which are normally updated by the government every five years.
Existing infrastructure can also be retrofitted to make the vulnerable buildings more resilient, particularly those that have already been damaged by earthquakes. Usually the retrofitting cost falls within 30% of the total reconstruction cost, he said, and it can be done in stages to keep the facility in use.
“You cannot stop earthquakes, right? You can only be safe where we make our structures and our other facilities stronger and retrofitted against those kind of disasters,” Alam said.
He said that whereas seismic issues received a lot of attention at the start of the century, concerns about the effects of climate change began to overshadow them about a decade ago.
“It’s on the back shelf. Nobody really is worried about it until there are big earthquakes happening. It’s not only in Thailand, it’s actually all around the world,” he said. “This might be a wake-up call for governments.”
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