After Wednesday last week’s earthquake on the east coast of Taiwan, some people complained that they had not received a national alert on their mobile phones.
I can personally attest that residents of Taitung County received a warning one minute before the earthquake struck. Upon receiving the alert, people in the neighborhood in which I live went outdoors and gathered in the street, where they watched as their buildings shook.
We thought the earthquake alert system worked pretty well, were impressed with the Central Weather Administration (CWA) for getting the warning out in advance and were surprised to learn the following day from media reports that the residents of seven districts in Taipei and New Taipei City had not received the alerts.
CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) said that there are more than 600 measuring stations throughout the east coast of Taiwan, but with the region between Hualien and Taitung counties being so narrow, it limits the places where stations could be set up, and given personnel, energy and Internet coverage constraints, they are not as evenly distributed as the stations on the west coast. As a result, the forecast values are not as reliable.
Another issue is that the threshold for tripping an alert was previously set at magnitude 3, but many complained that there were simply too many alerts, so the threshold was adjusted to magnitude 4. This threshold might well be adjusted again.
The east coast is on a fault line between the Philippine plate and the Eurasian plate, and earthquakes do happen from time to time in this area.
The earthquake alerts help protect lives and personal safety in the Huatung region. For this reason, the metropolitan area’s strong earthquake early warning improvement plan, as part of the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, should include an increase of seismic stations on the east coast.
Chen Chien-hsien is director of the Taitung Sports Development Foundation and an assistant professor at Meiho University’s Department of Social Work.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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