921 earthquake
On the 21st of September, a devastating earthquake hit Nantou, central Taiwan. The epicentre was in a small town called Jiji with the depth only being 8km deep. The magnitude of this earthquake was 7.3 on the Richter scale and caused many casualties and tremendous damage to buildings and everywhere surrounding Nantou. The area of effect was extremely large and a large 12 story building in Taipei, Northern Taiwan, also fell to the tremors causing 87 casualties.
Causes of the earthquake
Taiwan is situated on the edges of the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plate. Taiwan is also part of an island arc that was formed by a depression in the sea floor which contains sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Through compression the Philippine plate creates new mountains and lifts the surface of Taiwan. On average the Central range rise more than 0.5cm a year. Because of the high density of faults, Taiwan experiences many earthquakes. The movement of the Chelungpu and Shuangtung faults caused the devastating 921 earthquake.
Impacts of the 921 earthquake
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The 921 earthquake caused great impact on Taiwan, mainly socio-economic. There was huge loss of human life with 2415 deaths, 29 missing and 11305 severely wounded. This was devastating as many had loss family members or were close to the casualties. On the economic side, there were 53768 buildings destroyed which meant that many families had to evacuate the damaged areas and lost their homes. It also meant that the government would have to use a lot of money to rebuild the destroyed areas. There was a total of US$10 billion worth of housing damage. Power was also cut to the large majority of the island due to the tremendous damage to power stations, transmission stations and power lines from the tremors of the earthquake. There were also 102 bridges that were damaged heavily, most of them needing to be taken down. This meant that transport would not be as convenient and there would have to be reconstruction of bridges. Many highways and roads also were ruptured and damaged and required vast amounts of money to rebuild/make safe enough to travel through. There would mean that the economy of Taiwan would suffer massively as they would have to invest a lot of their money into fixing/rebuilding the destroyed bridges, buildings and other structures. They were also many older temples that had great cultural importance that collapsed/were destroyed because of the earthquake. This is significant as they were part of the history of Taiwan.
Differences between the impacts of earthquakes in LEDCs and MEDCs.
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Taiwan is a MEDC (more economically developed country) and would receive different impacts from an earthquake compared to a LEDC. In Taiwan, they is better communication and has is much more technologically advanced compared to LEDCs so they would be able to do more orderly evacuations and limit casualties to a minimum. The government also is much more wealthy and therefore can react to the earthquake instantaneously with money, water supplies, tents, restoring power and sending rescue crews. However, in MEDCs, most people usually live in cities which have a very high population density. This means that lots of people are living in a crowded area. This makes it more vulnerable to earthquakes as there are many buildings, lots going up to twenty and thirty metres tall, that can fall down and cause damage. It is also harder to get of buildings because they are usually 10 storeys plus and there is falling rubble from older, less stable buildings. The houses in MEDCs are also more stable as they take earthquakes and natural disasters into account and build against it. This means that there would be less damage dealt to the buildings and less buildings falling down and causing casualties.