Brutal. Prayers for everyone.
Guy
I have a playlist of Taiwan news streams here: youtube.com/playlist?list=P … zTvnfn_plf
First four are currently live feed.[/quote]
4gtv.tv/channel/free.do
This is free TV news in Taiwan
Madonna was soundly sleeping at 4 a.m. in her posh 5-star Rebel Tour concert tour hotel when suddenly…she felt the biggest killer quake she has ever experinced in her life! Chinese comunist internet peeps will likely say Madonna deserved the scare of her life for wearing the ROC Taiwan flag at Thursday show and saying I LOVE TAIWAN from the stage. American fundamentalsts blame Satan and say it’s God’s retribution. Commie CHINA PRC blames Madonna for playing into hands of the ROC splittists and incurring the wrath of the Earth gods.
HUMOUROUS ASIDE from religion columnist in Kansas City, who told me just now re killer quake:
''Dear Cola, Because you’re one of the few atheists out there who would appreciate this, I tell you the joke that my friend Calvin Coolidge (a stand-up comedian who is something like a fifth cousin of the late president) used to tell:
“I was in LA when an earthquake hit. The woman who was in bed with me as we were making love got rolled out onto the floor and was screaming. I said to her, ‘Now, don’t go expecting that every time.’”
Too soon to tell this joke? Humor helps sometimes.’’
Signed
B.
All high speed rail services stopped south of Taichung.
5 confirmed dead so far. 35 missing from toppled building.
Cat rescued from rubble. Pet owners beware happy ending but look at that face, onions cutting:http://udn.com/news/story/1/1491589
My friend said that the construction company used oil cans for the supporting pillars to save money. Here’s hoping lawsuits that drive them out of business coupled with murder charges.
That is the rumor going around. Not confirmed yet. 22 years old building.
Another building that was severely damaged but was completely empty was a hotel, still had all the scaffolding on. Now that is more interesting.
Such a tragedy. God help those in need. Reminds me of the horrible events of 921. This was just as big a scale for those who’s homes have collapsed or are destroyed.
Prayers and well wishes to the victims. 
Heard, from my mom’s translation of a Youtube broadcast, that they are in dire need for blood in the hospitals.
Thanks to all those who posted extremely helpful links and info. Major water main broke so many people are without water in parts of Tainan.
That is the rumor going around. Not confirmed yet. 22 years old building.
Another building that was severely damaged but was completely empty was a hotel, still had all the scaffolding on. Now that is more interesting.[/quote]
Shoddy construction is nothing rare here, I know.
Another friend said this:
那家公司已經倒閉了 That company already went bankrupt
新聞說就是蓋那棟蓋到一半倒閉的 The news said that it was when they’d built that building halfway that they went belly up.
There was a photo of the oil cans circulating, can’t find it now.
My father from the other side of the world was very worried because most news agencies started to show the collapsed buildings and when he tried to call me during the night it was impossible to reach me. My wife’s sister is in Kaohsiung, she just gave birth and her family is safe in the hospital. They live in a really tall building and luckily they had no major damage, just a lot of mess.
We were planning to go there and visit them tomorrow, might have to delay our plans.
Goddammit that building company.
I don’t know about oil cans, but what I have seen on the news is that they found polystyrene in some columns, presumably for cutting costs/corners
Every time there’s a major quake, the oil cans story goes around again. In the 921 quake at least one of these stories was from a building where oil cans were found in dead space inside a support column. That was just a lazy way of disposing of trash and not a structural risk. What causes more problems are bad designs (insufficient foundation, insufficient support for the load), poor quality concrete (not enough cement, using unprocessed beach sand), skimping on rebar and that sort of thing.
It’s important to note that quakes affect buildings differently. Depends on the intensity, length of shaking. P waves and S waves proximity and strength.
We note that much smaller buildings were intact but the row of 17 story buildings collapsed.
Obviously the building was not as strong as it should have been. But it may have just been the perfect height for this particular quake to shake and affect more strongly then a building of a lesser height.
NO doubt urodocus can explain it better.
Liquefaction also probably plays a major role in the way damage is distributed. Little structural damage near the epicenter but building collapses across Tainan. Why? Because Tainan is mostly built on loose soil which acts similar to a liquid during large quakes.
Liberty Times story (in Chinese) about the salad oil cans in the 維冠 Wéiguān (guàn?) Building, along with a photo. Structural engineer interviewed for the story said that the cans were there to increase the girth of non-critical pillars beyond their minimum dimensions for aesthetic reasons; basically, using the cans this way doesn’t actually cause structural problems, says this expert. In fact, using salad oil cans instead of concrete keeps the structural weight of the building down and makes it safer in an earthquake.
(I’m not even vaguely an expert, and have no idea the truth value of any of this; just translating what the story says.)
My dad works in constructions, I’m pretty sure that he’d have a seizure if I showed that pic to him.
Slept right through it here in Taidong; spent all day preparing for family dinner today ( many members working tomorrow); got a call from my sister in England talling me my mother was frantic about the earthquake.
ME: What earthquake? (turn to ask family members) Oh, I guess there was.
That’s because Banqiao isn’t in the SOUTH. 