Hualien Earthquake, Taiwan. This event occurred on 2 April 2024 23:58 GMT (3 April 7:58 local time). The magnitude (MW) 7.4 event occurred 16 km from the town of Hualien city with MMI up to VIII. There were also 3 aftershocks with MW greater than 6.0. It was accompanied by a 1 m tsunami.
Damage was widespread across the northeastern part of the island, including Taipei, New Taipei and Hualien County. At least 28 buildings collapsed, and 110 structures were destroyed. More than 1,930 houses, 870 buildings and 75 roads and tunnels were damaged. A total of 779 landslides affected 430 hectares. There were 18 deaths, 1,145 injured, 2 missing, and 600 people were stranded in the national park. The deaths were mainly as a result of landslides with very few inside buildings.
Taiwan has recently conducted a schools retrofit programme, and other structures were also retrofitted. There is a possibility to learn from the response of structures, the effectiveness of different retrofits, soil effects, the landslides (many of which are located in the national park), as well as the procedures for early warning, data dissemination after the event, and emergency management.
After discussions with different parties, and support kindly offered by EQC Toka Tu Ake, and from QuakeCoRE, it was decided to concentrate NZSEE Learning from Earthquake (LFE) efforts on this event. Coordination, support and communication is also being conducted between NZSEE and (i) a GNS team interested primarily in landslides, and (ii) a NZ-Japan-Taiwan Retrofit team focusing on the effectiveness of building retrofit. The NZ side of this retrofit team is sponsored primarily by the Royal Society of NZ, with additional support from QuakeCoRE.
The NZSEE LFE team is travelling in two deployments. In the first deployment two people are travelling with, and supporting, the RSNZ Retrofit Team in early-mid May. They are also making observations useful for the second NZSEE deployment in late May/early June.
NZSEE members of the first team are:
- Joe Byrne
- Ke Jiang
The second deployment of 7 people considers general structural effects, geotechnical effects, infrastructure effects, communication and planning effectiveness, and emergency management response. NZSEE learnings regarding the “4R’s” of disaster mitigation (reduction, readiness, response, and immediate recovery) will be disseminated widely, communicated to decision makers, and they serve as another step to ensure that NZ can be as prepared as it can to mitigate future disasters.
Members of the second team are:
- Bo-Yao Lee
- Alice Chang-Richards
- Julian Rincon-Gil
- Julian Benito
- Doug Mason
- Richard Mowll
- Patrick Cummuskey
Greg MacRae
NZSEE Learning from Earthquakes Convenor
