The Marshal Hotel (統帥飯店), among others, partially collapsed when a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit Hualien County on Feb. 6. It was pointed out by a number of local residents that the hotel had been structurally reinforced some time ago, with steel girders used to bolster the arcade. Regardless, these reinforcements were not sufficient to prevent the collapse of the first floor, causing the building to slant precariously.
The structural integrity of buildings tends to deteriorate over time, and alterations or additions only exacerbate this deterioration, therefore rendering the building in question all the more vulnerable to collapse. Although structural reinforcements might afford people more time to escape, they do not necessarily increase the earthquake resistance of a building.
There are more than 520,000 relatively old — aged 50 years or older — low-rise buildings across Taiwan. When these were built, there were no specific regulations governing earthquake resistance.
Consequently, the horizontal seismic force transmission of the buildings’ column-beam systems was not taken into consideration, and neither was the amount of play in the steel girders reinforcing those columns and beams. Consequently, the beam-column joints of these older buildings are not as strong as they could be.
Architectural design regulations in Taiwan state that the earthquake resistance of buildings must rely mainly on column-beam systems.
However, the reality of the situation is that when an earthquake hits, the force of it is transmitted through the entire building in a complex chain through the major and minor girders via horizontal transmission on each floor as a factor of the weight of an object on that floor, down through the main columns of the column-beam systems, and then through the columns and walls to the floor below. From there it travels to the lower floors and basement, and finally into the soil of the surrounding area, which absorbs the energy transferred from the floors above.
Most earthquake damage is caused by the cracking and fracture of columns, and the sudden collapse of the space between stories, leaving the people on individual floors little time to escape.
Structural reinforcement when these buildings were constructed was generally done by simply enlarging columns or superficially repairing walls, both of which did little to actually reinforce the structure.
Enlarging columns within the buildings by adding at least 40cm on each side of the columns was an expensive process and — together with the installation of concrete internal walls — significantly reduced the amount of interior space.
In many old buildings in Taiwan, there was already precious little space from one column to the next when they were first built, so adding extra interior walls only further reduced the space inside. On top of this, reinforcing the column-beam joints that can transmit the energy of earthquakes, apart from being technically difficult to do, is expensive, and there is no guarantee that it would be effective.
In addition, the majority of low-rises built at the time employed the isolated footing design for columns, and any alterations or improvements to this would entail major alterations that are very difficult to do.
As we have seen from the above discussion, structural reinforcements to old four or five-story buildings might be able to save people’s lives, but whether they would improve the overall structural integrity is questionable.
Such an approach might well be helpful, but it does not get to the core of the problem. To do this, the most effective and thorough way would be to construct new buildings. This would protect both lives and property.
William Hu is the chairman of the associations for the reconstruction and development of old buildings in Taipei and New Taipei City.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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