The Taiwan earthquake showed that it was well prepared, perhaps more so than the United States

A powerful earthquake that struck Taiwan on Wednesday shook an island that was well prepared for a seismic disaster — likely more so than some areas of the United States, several experts said.

Nine people were reported killed, although Taiwanese officials said the death toll could rise in the coming days. More than 1,000 people were injured and at least 100 were feared trapped. But given the size of the 7.4-magnitude quake, seismologists said it appeared the dense island was in good condition as expected in initial reports.

This is no coincidence: Taiwan uses a robust early warning system, has modern earthquake-proof building codes, experts say, and its residents are accustomed to frequent seismic activity. Following the devastating 1999 Chi Chi earthquake, the island significantly upgraded much of its infrastructure.

“Two-four hundred people died. And this time, we only have nine people killed. You see progress,” said Larry Siu-Hing Lai, a geologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, who grew up and studied in Taiwan. “Our buildings are stronger. Our facilities are the best. You could say we take it seriously, but it's part of life every day.

Experts said US cities in earthquake-prone areas along the West Coast are making varying levels of progress in preparing for earthquakes. But nothing quite measures up to the capital of Taiwan.

“Seattle doesn't do as much to prepare — or Portland — as Los Angeles or San Francisco. Neither of them do as much to prepare as Taipei,” said Harold Tobin, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and a professor at the University of Washington.

A California Highway Patrol officer checks for damage to cars that fell when the upper deck of the Bay Bridge collapsed onto the lower deck after the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco on October 17, 1989. George Nikitin/AP file

Officials and researchers in Taiwan are still assessing the characteristics of the earthquake, its effects and victims. The lessons they learn can provide American scholars and political leaders with a yardstick to measure the success of buildings and communities here.

“These events always provide us with information to evaluate how well we are doing here in California,” said John Wallace, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In a review of photos and initial reports from Taiwan after the quake, Wallace said it appeared that much of the damage was in old concrete buildings that were between five and 10 stories high and on the first floors had open commercial space. Many were on street corners, where buildings could be subject to buckling forces, adding to the damage.

“There's a weak first story that falls apart. It concentrates the damage in that first story,” Wallace said.

A damaged building on Tuesday in Hualien City, Taiwan.TVBS via AP

He added that older concrete buildings are expected to suffer from earthquakes, and are targets for retrofitting in Taiwan and the United States. Meanwhile, high-rise buildings in Taiwan – which have a higher level of engineering – appear to have performed admirably, as expected, he said.

This includes Taipei 101, the tallest tower on the island, which features a 660-metric-ton steel ball suspended by cables on its upper floors, a system designed to mitigate movement from high winds and earthquakes.

“If what appears to have happened is true — for the size of this earthquake and its closeness to the ground, they did generally well there. I hate to say that when people get killed,” Tobin said.

Nearly 25 years ago, the 7.7-magnitude Chi Chi earthquake prompted Taiwan to prepare better.

Lai was 11 years old when the quake struck, and he still remembers how the quake woke him up in his family's Taipei apartment and nearly threw him out of bed.

After that, he noticed that the island was slowly turning to better reduce the risks. At the school, there has been a new focus and training on earthquake safety. Over the next decade, political leaders established new building codes, reclassified seismic zones and designated emergency command centers in rural areas, Lai said.

Wallace flew to Taiwan a week after the Chi Chi earthquake and helped inspect bridges in the earthquake's aftermath. In the years that followed, he said, the island began evaluating and upgrading school buildings and then moved on to the oldest buildings most at risk of collapse.

The initiatives are similar to Southern California's: “We've basically been doing the same thing,” Wallace said.

But he added that he believed Taiwan moved more quickly because frequent and smaller earthquakes had brought the issue to the forefront.

Other West Coast states lag behind California. Washington has only begun to systematically evaluate its schools in the past 10 years, and many of Seattle's older brick buildings have not been updated and would likely collapse in the event of a major earthquake.

Taiwan's advanced early warning system also forms an important part of the safety infrastructure. The system relies on an island-wide network of seismic instruments. When a major earthquake occurs, the system sends messages to people's phones and automatically interrupts live TV programs to give residents seconds of warning.

Some aspects are similar to the systems used in California, Oregon, and Washington.

“In the US, our ShakeAlert system has the ability to send Amber Alert-style messages to all of our phones, but it's not connected to broadcast media in the same way,” Tobin said.

A video on social media showed television footage of Taiwanese news programs in which warnings arrived on the screen before the shaking began, according to Tobin.

He added that in Taiwan, “there is a more comprehensive warning capability.”

Systems in both Taiwan and the United States work by detecting “P waves” generated by an earthquake and calculating its strength before sending alerts over the Internet.

“Earthquakes send out different waves — ripples on a pond — from the epicenter,” Tobin said. “The ripples that spread faster are not the ones that are harmful, they are a harbinger, and a Paul Revere rider.”

Taiwan's progress on earthquake safety has been incremental and requires public education, as well as trust in the government and trust in scientists, Lai said.

“It took us 25 years to get to this point,” he added.

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