Could LA’s Buildings Collapse Like Those In Taiwan?

Some of the most shocking images that’ve come out of Taiwan over the past 24 hours have been of the partially collapsed Uranus building on Xuanyuan Road in Hualien.

It’s unclear how many structures across the country are in this state, as information is still trickling out.

A search and rescue team prepares outside a leaning building in the aftermath of an earthquake in Hualien, eastern Taiwan on Wednesday, April 3, 2024.

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National Fire Agency via AP

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That said, this is a known issue in Taiwan, as buildings have collapsed or partially collapsed during earthquakes in 2018, 2016 and 1999, the last time a magnitude 7.3 temblor struck the country.

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While building inspections and retrofits have been ongoing, the collapses highlight the stock of older, dangerous structures that are prone to failure when a big quake blows through.

Japanese (L) and Taiwanese rescue workers (R) look at the Yun Tsui building in the Taiwanese city of Hualien on Feb. 9, 2018, after the city was hit by a 6.4-magnitude quake late on Feb. 6. Taiwan began demolishing three dangerously damaged buildings on Feb. 9 as rescue workers combed the rubble of a hotel in a last-ditch effort to find seven people still missing after a deadly earthquake.

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Anthony Wallace

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AFP

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Taiwan and L.A. have similar building codes, and lots of the same types of problem buildings, though it may not be as apparent here, as the last time we got hit by a major magnitude 7.9 earthquake was in 1857.

“It will take an earthquake to see ... how good a job we've done and what we need to make it better,” said Domniki Asimaki, professor of mechanical and civil engineering at Caltech.

A man looks at the cordoned off site of a leaning building in the aftermath of an earthquake on April 3, 2024.

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Chiang Ying-ying

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AP

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What are the problem buildings?

The two types of structurally deficient buildings that experts told me can be found in both locations are soft story and non-ductile, or brittle, concrete buildings.

Soft story structures are those that have insufficient support on the ground floor, which can give out and cause the building to collapse on itself and tip over — like what we saw with the Northridge Meadows apartments in the Northridge Earthquake in 1994.

You can sometimes notice soft stories on larger commercial buildings if a lower floor is wide open to accommodate shops or parking.

The Northridge Meadows apartments fared poorly in the 1994 earthquake.

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U.S. Geological Survey

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Brittle concrete buildings lack ductility, or the ability to flex and return to a safe state, after being jostled around by strong ground movements. They can fail abruptly and catastrophically.

What about retrofits?

Like Taiwan, we have retrofit programs in place, but more than 4,000 of these types of buildings still need to be fixed across L.A., according to the Department of Building and Safety. It could be decades before they are.

“We're racing against time for when this earthquake is going to happen,” said John Wallace, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Samueli School of Engineering at UCLA. “We probably won't get them all done before the next earthquake, but we want to get to as many of them as we can.”

Both Wallace and Domniki said that it wouldn’t be a surprise if some of these buildings failed, which is why we have retrofit programs in place.

If you'd like to see whether a building needs to be retrofitted, you can check out the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety website.

The National Guard in front of the Northridge Meadows apartments on January 24, 1994 where 16 people died during the earthquake in the night of Jan. 17, 1994.

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Hal Garb

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AFP

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Get ready for the next big quake

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