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7.1 Earthquake in Japan

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Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#32
post #12
post #2

Does anyone know if this also affects South Korea?

I was told that some people in Busan, the Korean city nearest to Japan, felt the earthquake and even felt dizzy.

I'm in Busan, though I didn't feel anything. (I was on the beach at the time though.)

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Japan though. They don't have non-resistant buildings.

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.

Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#34

Was looking at webcams here ( https://tokyo.fyi ) but realized this is further south.

Found a few online webcams, but I'm not really sure I saw the earthquake. People didn't even seem to stop on the webcam I was watching. Lots of cars on the bridge afterwards though while before it there were much less, idk

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.

For a long time "live with earthquakes and build accordingly" meant "make it easy to rebuild", not "engineer the structures to withstand the earthquakes".

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#36
post #30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They could have been further away from the epicenter of the previous ones, or the previous ones weren't strong enough to cause that specific structure to collapse, the previous ones might have weakened the structure and this one brought it down, a million different things factor into this.

Earthquakes aren't a perfectly repeatable occurrences you can run a regression test against.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#37
post #3

7.1 seems to mean non resistant buildings may collapse.

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.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#39
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.

For a long time "live with earthquakes and build accordingly" meant "make it easy to rebuild", not "engineer the structures to withstand the earthquakes".

In Gölcük/İzmit, there was a huge 7.4 earthquake in 99.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_%C4%B0zmit_earthquake

It took around 10 years until the city felt "normal" again (source: a close friend lives there).

My point is, it's never easy to rebuild.

Re: 7.1 Earthquake in Japan

#40
post #30
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Possibly, and then rebuilt. They rebuild houses every 20, 30 odd years anyway (according to https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusabl...), and temples too https://longnow.org/ideas/long-term-building-in-japan/.
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