There's plenty of old buildings here that are not built up to the latest standards; increasing exponentially the further you get from the core of a big city.
Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.
Like half of the buildings are non-resistant since they are old and made of wood. IIRC only buildings built after 1991 are guaranteed to be earthquake resistant.
Yes, but the situation got a lot better and a lot worse...
Sadly there has been a bunch of pretty devastating earthquakes in recent years.
In particular in Kumamoto the one in 2016 (magnitude 6.5) was huge and many of the houses built at lower standard or not in great shape anymore got partially or totally wrecked. Right now the house that are left are relatively well built.
The bad news is, that still doesn't help as the cumulative damage can still bring them down, and they're still subject to landslides, water damage, and other second order disastrous events.
Which works great in earthquakes in my experience in Christchurch. Most homes in New Zealand are made of wood.
Christchurch had a 7.1 that was 40km away, that caused some damage (certainly the wooden house I was living in at the time was fine).
Christchurch then had a 6.2 which damaged many concrete and brick buildings because the epicentre was shallow and within the city (6.2 sounds small but if it is close then that really matters). Many house foundations were completely stuffed, but the wooden houses above were often relatively unscathed. I bought a damaged house cheaply with a broken ring foundation: "as-is" or uninsured or insurance payout are the keywords.
Christchurch had maybe 180000 homes, of which about 10,000 were ultimately demolished. But they mostly weren't demolished because the wooden home itself had failed. The majority of demolished homes were in red-zones beside the river or estuary, which the houses could have been repaired but the ground was not good and also future flood risk was the problem. The government, the city, and insurers worked together to remove a lot of homes that had other risks.
One of the reasons Japan uses wood for construction is that combined with their traditional building techniques it results in earthquake resistant buildings.
Yea seems pretty bad given its on the higher end of the scale... I might be naive but I hope nobody died
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Kumamoto_earthquakes
The main shock of this one at 7.0 killed 277 people so sadly I think it’s pretty likely there will be some deaths.
It's Japan though. They don't have non-resistant buildings.
There's plenty of old buildings here that are not built up to the latest standards; increasing exponentially the further you get from the core of a big city.
Japan is _very good_ at tearing down old buildings and building better in their place; but it doesn't mean that there are zero old buildings around.
Wouldn't the not so strong old buildings have collapsed during previous quakes?
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Like half of the buildings are non-resistant since they are old and made of wood. IIRC only buildings built after 1991 are guaranteed to be earthquake resistant.
Yes, but the situation got a lot better and a lot worse...
Sadly there has been a bunch of pretty devastating earthquakes in recent years. In particular in Kumamoto the one in 2016 (magnitude 6.5) was huge and many of the houses built at lower standard or not in great shape anymore got partially or totally wrecked. Right now the house that are left are relatively well built.
The bad news is, that still doesn't help as the cumulative damage can still bring them down, and they're still subject to landslides, water damage, and other second order disastrous events.
> and made of wood
Which works great in earthquakes in my experience in Christchurch. Most homes in New Zealand are made of wood.
Christchurch had a 7.1 that was 40km away, that caused some damage (certainly the wooden house I was living in at the time was fine).
Christchurch then had a 6.2 which damaged many concrete and brick buildings because the epicentre was shallow and within the city (6.2 sounds small but if it is close then that really matters). Many house foundations were completely stuffed, but the wooden houses above were often relatively unscathed. I bought a damaged house cheaply with a broken ring foundation: "as-is" or uninsured or insurance payout are the keywords.
Christchurch had maybe 180000 homes, of which about 10,000 were ultimately demolished. But they mostly weren't demolished because the wooden home itself had failed. The majority of demolished homes were in red-zones beside the river or estuary, which the houses could have been repaired but the ground was not good and also future flood risk was the problem. The government, the city, and insurers worked together to remove a lot of homes that had other risks.
Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.
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One of the reasons Japan uses wood for construction is that combined with their traditional building techniques it results in earthquake resistant buildings.