They stare through the window, rendered mute by the sight of entire city blocks, one after the next, cut down and reduced to rubble.
"Wear your hard hats at all times and don't go into questionable structures," Lin Hsiang-neng says as the van rolls to a stop in the heart of Chichi. The once quaint downtown area now looks like a war zone. Soldiers carry supplies and MP guards use sharp whistle blasts to direct a constant stream of traffic.
"Many of these homes haven't been entered since the first quake so you don't know what you might find," Lin continues. "Just remember -- we're here to get the job done, but, as always, safety first. No unnecessary risks."
PHOTO: JAY SPEIDEN
These are Lin's final words as his inspection corps of architects, members of a volunteer team, step out of the van, divide up into teams of two and head out into Chichi and the town's surrounding countryside, where they will average 30 to 40 home inspections per team per day. They are the first wave of inspectors to reach the area and it will be their job to determine which buildings have been dealt a fatal blow by the quake and which are still sound enough to stand up to the possibility of a future shake. It's a job that will continue for weeks to come.
Local resident Jian Wei-ying says that she will never forget the night she woke to find her third floor apartment at ground level. "I remember sitting bolt upright in bed," Jian recalls. "I tried to stand, but was tossed across the room. When the shaking stopped I got my family together and tried to get out, but we found that there were no more stairs going down. I looked out of a window and noticed that we were already at ground level. We walked out through a window just before the first aftershock hit bringing the whole place down."
To Roan Ching-yuan and Cho Jin-yang, two members of an inspection team dispatched to her neighborhood, Jian's story is becoming a common one.
PHOTO: JAY SPEIDEN, TAIPEI TIMES
The architects, wearing yellow hard hats, stand under the scant shade of a few betel nut trees making notes on their clipboards. A mournful wave of Buddhist chants drifts from across the street where Jian's neighbors, an elderly couple, were crushed when their mud brick farmhouse collapsed during the shock of the first quake. The architects have arrived in Chi-chi exactly seven days after the quake, the day that, according to Chinese belief, the spirits of those killed in sudden tragedies depart for the afterworld. The chants, which are meant to help the spirits of the dead on their way, lend an even more solemn air to the task ahead.
The architects don't need to tell Jian that her home will receive a red sticker, marking it as "dangerous" and uninhabitable. But the evaluation of other structures in the neighborhood is not as cut-and-dried.
"We want to determine which buildings are structurally sound and which buildings have been compromised and rendered unlivable," explains Cho, en route to another farmhouse down the road. "During this initial inspection process we'll take the name and address of the people who live in the homes and flag each structure with a red, yellow or green sticker: Red for dangerous, yellow for compromised and green for safe." Cho adds that sometimes it takes a specially trained eye to decipher the structural viability of a building or home. "A building can look bad, cracks everywhere, but it is actually still quite secure." Cho says. "Or the opposite can be true. It might not look too bad at all, but the structure is actually highly compromised."
PHOTO: JAY SPEIDEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Cho says that 100 percent of the houses in and around Chi-chi will have some signs of structural damage, but that what he and Roan are looking for is damage to internal systems that were designed specifically to counter the force of earthquakes. Specifically, beams, columns, joints and foundations.
"A wall can be spider-webbed with cracks," says Roan as he fills out a green form, "but if the beam and foundation systems are still intact, the building can be saved."
Roan and Cho have just completed an inspection of a farmhouse that survived the quake despite the fact that three similar homes nearby collapsed completely. The tenant, an elderly farmer, takes the form with a smile and hands it to his wife who is sitting in a tent pitched in an outdoor courtyard just feet away from the rubble of a fallen house. They thank the inspectors over and over again, offering them bottled water and a seat by a card table set up near the door to their tent. She folds the green form and puts it in the tent. Neither of them makes a move toward the house.
PHOTO: JAY SPEIDEN, TAIPEI TIMES
"Nobody's been inside all week," says Tony Hsu, a 13-year old Chi-chi resident. "It's not because I'm afraid," he adds, putting on a brave face. "I'll go back inside to play computer games," he says, and then, seemingly for the sake of bravado, he adds, "If my house falls, it falls. There's nothing I can do about it."
But just a few minutes later, as Hsu enters the dark confines of a local supermarket to help the inspectors rummage through a pile of tin cans littering the floor in a search for Mr. Brown's Coffee, he becomes upset by their leisurely pace. "Hurry up," he says again and again, shooting glances toward the light flowing through the market's shattered glass door. Outside again, back in the light of day, Hsu is visibly relieved.
"People who live in this area of Taiwan are in a tough situation when it comes to housing because they get hit by both earthquakes and typhoons," says Roan. "While a heavy roof does well in a typhoon, it's disaster in a quake." Roan points to slabs of a stone roof mixed in with the rubble of what used to be a traditional style farmhouse. "On the other hand, light roofs do much better in a quake, but they get blown off in strong typhoons. It's a no-win situation."
PHOTO: CHRIS TAYLOR, TAIPEI TIMES
At the next house an elderly woman greets the inspection team with a big silver toothed smile. "Thank you so much for coming to look at my house," she says shaking their hands and then offering everyone a cold drink box. Inside her home, time has been frozen. The calendar in her kitchen still reads September 20th , broken dishes litter the floor, a baby's ball sits deflated atop a pile of unpeeled bulbs of garlic.
"I won't go back inside until you say it's OK," the woman says to the inspectors. "I wouldn't dare." Outside, her granddaughter and two friends sit on the porch and watch through the open door as the inspectors pick their way further into the house.
Then the girls, their senses peaked by a long week of tremors, are the first to notice it. They let out a shriek and bolt out into the front yard. It's an aftershock, strong enough to cause chunks of cement to begin crashing down from the rafters. Roan and Cho, who are half-way up a rickety ladder leading to the attic, jump down and run for the door arriving in the street just after the shaking stops.
After going back in and completing the inspection of the house, which has no strength left in its beam support system, Cho and Roan issue a red sticker.
This means that the woman and her family will have to continue living in a tent for weeks, possibly months. But this setback, somehow, doesn't stop the old woman from thanking the inspectors again and again for coming, flashing her silver smile and forcing more drink boxes into their hands and pockets and bags as they depart for the next house.
Before they go, Cho tells the girls not to worry, adding that a new house will be safer. The girls look at him perplexed, as if he was speaking a different language, or didn't fully understand.
When his back turns the young girl turns to her friends and says, "Safer? There is no such thing as safe around here."
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