The most powerful earthquake to hit Taiwan in 25 years, which left at least nine dead and a thousand injured Tuesday, could continue its tremors and cause more victims in the coming days, warns an expert.
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“It’s a big possibility,” emphasizes Fiona Darbyshire, director of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal. We have had almost 40 aftershocks of magnitude 4 or greater so far. »
They occurred in a “length or width of about 50, 60 kilometers” around the epicenter, on the east coast of the country, she adds.
According to a recent report, nine people lost their lives and more than 1,000 others were injured in this earthquake with a magnitude estimated at 7.4.
- Listen to the interview with Fiona Ann Darbyshire, seismologist and professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UQAM on QUB:
All the deaths occurred in the Hualien region, the national fire agency also announced.
The victims were on a hiking trail, in their vehicle due to landslides or even in a quarry.
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“If there are aftershocks with large enough powers […] and we have a building that is already damaged, [cela] could cause even more damage,” argues Professor Darbyshire.
Buildings that sag
On Tuesday, many buildings in Taiwan buckled, but did not collapse, a situation believed to be mainly due to the presence of water in the ground.
“The ground becomes liquid, like water, and the buildings sag at that moment, a bit like the Tower of Pisa,” illustrated Florent Brenguier, seismologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences in the University of Grenoble, in an interview with LCN.
For Maurice Lamontagne, associate professor of Earth sciences at Carleton University, the main weakness of Taiwanese buildings lies in the first floors.
Photo AFP
This was demonstrated in 1999, during the 7.6 magnitude earthquake which caused the death of more than 2,000 people.
“The upper floors are very rigid and at the base you often have what we would call a soft level where there are fewer barriers to movement,” the professor explained.
Related to Japan
However, we will have to wait for the expertise of engineers to find out more.
“Probably the Taiwan government, because of the frequency of earthquakes, [prévoit] buildings that are appropriate for the seismicity of the region,” suggests, for her part, Professor Fiona Darbyshire.
There is also a link between the earthquake that shook Taiwan and the one that hit Japan on January 1, and which left more than 240 dead.
AFP
“ [Les pays] are connected by a whole zone of subducting plates which cross this entire zone of the western Pacific, a very very active zone in Taiwan,” mentioned Florent Brenguier.
Less damage than in Türkiye
The damage recorded on the Taiwanese island is fortunately less than that which occurred in Turkey in February 2023. More than 50,000 people died.
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The main difference, in the eyes of Professor Maurice Lamontagne, is the extent of the reactivated fault.
” In the case [de mardi] in Taiwan, fortunately it was a depth of about 35 kilometers below the surface, but still it is along a fault which would be about sixty kilometers long by about forty depths, so there is a lot of energy that is released,” he explained.
–With the QMI Agency and the AFP