My friend and longtime Hualien resident Ryan sent around this pic. Hualien County Chief Fu Kun-qi, an "independent" with longtime KMT ties, recently spent what appears to be county money on this empty bag which he handed out to county residents, labeling it a Tsunami Survival Kit. Naturally his name is prominent on it. Ryan helpfully translated the list of stuff you should put in it:

The list of things... 1. water 2. food 3. copies of your ID 4. cash 5. first aid 6. work gloves 7. flashlight 8. coat/underwear 9. blanket 10. light raincoat 11. heat pack 12. tissue/face mask 13. stationery 14. spare keys 15. swiss army knife/whistle...
"Hualien County Magistrate Fu Kun-qi cares about the safety of your family."

Ryan added:

Notably absent: water purification tablets. Duct tape. Plastic bags. Can opener. Hygiene products (sanitizer). Tools. extra batteries. candles. flares. water-proof matches. lighter. rope.

Fu's tale is told here.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Nuclear Round Up

On Facebook the other day I remarked that one thing this disaster in Japan is going to lead to is a flood of pro-nuke propaganda as the industry attempts to stifle criticism. On that note, Far Eastern Sweet Potato observes that something is fishy in Premier Wu's soothing remarks....

"“However, the Fukushima plant was equipped with a third-generation [reactor] while Taiwan’s nuclear power plants operate fourth-generation [sic] ones,” Wu said. Chinese-language media have already made references to “fourth-generation” reactors in Taiwan, and that’s what made be stand up. According to the literature on nuclear energy, fourth-generation nuclear reactors are still in the research phase and will not be commercially operational for another two decades or so (2030, by some estimates). Only the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR), also known as the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), will be launched prior to 2030, and still, it is not expected to be completed before 2021. There are reactors known as Gen-III+ and Gen-III++, but those are not used in Taiwan either.

I then asked my reporter to contact Taipower Corp, which operates nuclear plants in Taiwan. Their chief of public relations confirmed that the premier was wrong and that there was no fourth-generation nuclear reactor in Taiwan.

In fact, the Atomic Energy Council Web site tells us that the No. 1 power plant uses a BWR-4 (boiling water, second-generation) reactor; the No. 2 plant a BWR-6 (third-generation) reactor; the No. 3 a PWR (pressurized water, third-generation) reactor; and the No. 4 (Lungmen) will use an ABWR (advanced boiling water, also third-generation) reactor.

Lots of propaganda still to come....

Meanwhile the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan may once again become a force in the island's politics. In the 1990s it was a rallying cause for the opposition to the KMT, but it became a major issue for Chen Shui-bian's first administration when Chen reversed his pre-election stance and gave the go-ahead to the (incredibly stupid) Fourth Nuclear Plant near Fulong in what used to be Taipei County.

Rueters reported the other day that Taipower was set to study alternatives to nukes in the wake of the Japan disaster.

Taiwan's state-run Taipower is studying plans to cut nuclear power output and raise output in alternative energy amid Japan's nuclear crisis, an executive said on Monday, though no changes will be made for current operations.

Essentially it gives the appearance of doing something while actually doing nothing.

The Taipei Times concluded an editorial on the nuke disaster in Japan with the kind of comment everyone is making:

....The tsunami and explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant have both given Taiwan cause for alarm. Our government immediately convened an interdepartmental disaster response conference to discuss how the Japanese quake might possibly affect Taiwan and what to do if the wind dumps radioactive dust on our territory. At the level of passive response, the government has acted quite quickly, but a plan for a disaster alarm and information system is still on the Cabinet’s drawing board.

With no single department dedicated to disaster prevention and response, our rescue and relief resources cannot be effectively integrated. Next time Taiwan is hit directly by a natural disaster, it may be more than we can handle.

Today in the legislature the heads of the NSC and Atomic Energy Commission and the Ministry of the Interior all denied that there were any evacuation plans for Taipei in the event that nuke plants 1 & 2 suffer a catastrophe. *sigh*

Global Voices collected comments from local bloggers and adding commentary:

Currently Japan has 17 nuclear power plants in its 378,000 square-kilometer territory and three more will be in operation by 2018. Taiwan covers an area of just 36,000 square kilometers, yet has three nuclear power plants and is building a fourth. The density of nuclear power plants is therefore much higher in Taiwan than in Japan, so you can image how Taiwanese feel when they see the disaster unfolding at Fukushima.

.......

The first and second nuclear power plants are five to seven kilometers [km] away from the Shanjiao Fault in the Kinshan coastal area. The fourth nuclear power plant is less than five km away from six inactive faults. In addition, within a radius of 80 km of the fourth nuclear power plant, there are more than 70 undersea volcanoes, 11 of them are active.

....

The nuclear reactors in the first and second nuclear power plants in Taiwan are similar to many nuclear reactors in Japan. Since there are frequent earthquakes in Taiwan and Japan, what has happened in Japan will also happen in Taiwan. The recent design of the Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) has adopted high-quality SUS317L stainless steel as the construction material, which is softer and has fewer cracking problems, and all the nuclear power companies have kept stressing that this material will never develop cracks. In the current accident [Fukushima], we have seen the cracks. In fact, far back in 2002, cracks were found in the BWR in the investigation of the Tokyo electric power company scandal.

.....

In 2008, there was a scandal in the construction of the fourth nuclear power plant in Taiwan because the constructor changed the original design without authorization. Later, the control room was submerged in a typhoon. Recently, the plant has failed in a number of safety tests. Yet the constructors are hurrying to complete construction because of orders from the top. Is this a risk we want to take?

Remember this report from June of 2010? "Nuclear power plant a disaster":

Making assertions that raise concerns about the safety of the plant, Robert Greenspan, president of the Rapid City, South Dakota-based Midco Diving and Marine Services, said during a telephone interview with the Taipei Times on Tuesday last week that Taiwan Power Corp (TPC), the operator of the nuclear power plant, was treating the suppression pool — a critical component in case of an emergency — as a “garbage dump.”

There are no problems. Everything is under control. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

The figure above (source) shows earthquake epicenters in eastern Taiwan. Taiwan averages more than 18,000 quakes annually, most of which we don't feel, all gods be thanked. That end of Taiwan, which contains three of the island's four nuclear plants, is in a state of slow collapse after mountain building and is subsiding to form new portions of the Okinawa Trough, whose western end forms the I-lan plain on land.

Lest you think Kenting is not under threat, southwestern Taiwan is considered be to a place with a high probability of a Big One, according to another paper I read. Yet another paper on tsunami dangers noted that the region between northern Luzon and Taiwan is due for a large quake since no quake greater than 7.5 has been reported there for over a century.

Taiwan is also ringed by underwater volcanoes, with five eruptions since 1853, shown here as red bullseyes, none of which were very memorable, thankfully. In addition to the 70 or so off of I-lan (the Quaternary Ryukyu Volcanic Front) there's another crowd of 40 or so mud volcanoes off Kaohsiung city and extending in four groups along southwestern Taiwan, and again to the north of the island in an area known as the Northern Taiwan Volcanic Zone, which extends onto the island to form the volcanoes of Tatun Group (Yangmingshan). Some authorities argue that the Quaternary Ryukyu Volcanic Front and the Northern Taiwan Volcanic Zone derive their magma from the same sources. (A Refined Historical Record of Volcanic Eruptions around Taiwan: Tectonic Implications in the Arc-continent Collision Area. Chang-Hwa Chen and Jason Jiun-San Shen, TAO, Vol. 16, No. 2, 331-343, June 2005).

Many of you know that Yangmingshan is volcanic in origin (and dormant, not dead), but can you name another volcano that forms land in Taiwan? Go to the head of the class if you mentioned Gueishan Island (Turtle Mountain Island), easily visible from I-lan on a clear day. Here's an image:

In fact, there are two distinct volcanoes on Gueishan Island -- the "head" of the turtle and its body. They have collapsed over time. This volcano is not dead either. In addition to the dangers of eruption, the dotted white lines in the image limn a probable landslide scarp. Falling blocks of land can generate large waves. And just across from Turtle Mountain Island is -- you guessed it -- the Fourth Nuclear Plant near Fulong. As the paper I drew this information from notes (Chiu et al, Volcanic Characteristics of Kueishantao in Northeast Taiwan and Their Implications, Terr. Atmos. Ocean. Sci., Vol. 21, No. 3, 575-585, June 2010):

This implies that the collapse of the KST volcano may have the potential to induce catastrophic tsunamis into the I-lan plain in the future. The layers of lava flows form dip slopes in the northern and northwestern flanks of the KST. The hydrothermal alterations are still active and weaken the volcanic rocks about the steep coastal cliff around the island that create landslide conditions triggered by an earthquake. We, therefore, propose that KST is capable of inducing volcanic hazards, especially for ash falls and tsunamis in the vicinity of northern Taiwan which requires further survey and long-term monitoring.

Volcanoes. Quakes. Landslides. Tsunamis. Typhoons. War. All in a day's work on The Beautiful Island.
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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

What if it happened here?

What about disaster here?

I got to wondering about this question. The scale of the Japanese disaster defies imagination; how would Taiwan handle such an event? I hunted down some stuff but it basically all came down to this:

Following the Chi-chi Earthquake, Taiwan began to systematically review and improve its emergency management system, yet there is still a lack of a national and policy-oriented spearheading with respect to disaster mitigation and response management measures for major urban earthquake disasters. For example, every four years, the Executive Yuan, Taiwan holds a national technology conference. The strategies adopted at the 2005 conference emphasized the search for and application of an earthquake disaster loss assessment system; at the 2009 conference that marked the 10th anniversary of the Chi-chi Earthquake, a recapitulation report on Topic VI mentioned the importance of studying and drafting a large-scale urban earthquake disaster mitigation strategy. Although such issues were academically discussed over the past decades, there was not much to be done in terms of the government’s actual strategizing framework.

It's the old story, there is hardly an urgent of need of Taiwan's that cannot be described as "not much to be done in terms of the government's actual strategizing framework." Historically Taiwan has been hit by tsunamis (source)....

What this list shows is that practically anywhere in Taiwan might be hit by a tsunami -- especially when you consider that tsunamis from elsewhere might well end up on our shores. Quakes can happen anywhere in the area -- the 1604 and 1661 tsunamis were generated by quakes in the Taiwan Strait. To get some idea of what places might be especially vulnerable, the rising sea level maps at flood.firetree.net will provide a rough view (a few articles on the government's quake warning programs, in place since the 1990s, are collected here). How high above the waterline are the nuke plants, which are all near the coast?

President Ma gave his answer to the emphatically bipartisan failing of disaster strategizing last year while engaging in pre-event CYA for an incoming typhoon:

President Ma Ying-jeou says local governments are responsible for disaster prevention, rescue efforts and evacuation plans. Ma's statement came Tuesday following a land warning against Typhoon Namtheun issued by the Central Weather Bureau a day earlier.

During his inspection of a disaster prevention center, Ma talked about the different tasks of the central and local governments.

"We've always held that local governments are responsible for disaster prevention and rescue while the central government offers support," said Ma. "The central government will provide data such as weather [conditions], so that local governments can fully grasp the situation. But local governments are in charge of implementing [disaster-related] plans. The central government will offer full support."

Nor is this just Ma, then-Premier Su said the same thing back in '04 after a mudslide, and asked -- of all authorities -- the Council of Agriculture to draw up evacuation plans.

Reacting to a mudslide triggered by Typhoon Haima which killed four members of the same family in Hsinchu County on the weekend, Minister of the Interior Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) yesterday said he had asked the Council of Agriculture to draw up a comprehensive evacuation plan for vulnerable areas.

"Disaster Prevention Law [災害防救法] Article 214 grants city mayors and county commissioners the right to forcibly evacuate. The responsibility to evacuate therefore falls on heads of local governments," Su said yesterday. "The central government's role is instead to offer weather-related information and provide assistance to local governments in the decision-making process."

Unfortunately quakes and tsunamis do not follow county boundaries and in any case cash-strapped local governments are too poor to carry out evacuations and then feed and house the survivors. Hopefully the next Administration will take this timely warning from Japan and start to get our own house in order.....
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Daily Links:

• Frozen Garlic with some interesting ruminations on the upcoming elections, with Tsai declaring and everyone fighting for winnable seats.
  
• Long term expats enjoy living in Taiwan
  
• Taiwan should build subs! And what would their basing arrangements be?
• Taiwan industrial park for Gujurat
• US DNI names China as "mortal threat."
• One Melbourne firefighter's experience in coming to Taiwan after 9/21.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.

Siaolin Village Geological Probe Report

Typhoon Morakot buried Siaolin Village, killing hundreds. Many victims claimed that tunneling for a nearby diversion project was a cause of the disaster. This week the geological assessment was released....

“More than 30 million tonnes of mud rushed down from nearby Mount Siandu [獻肚山] at a speed of 180kph when the mountain collapsed,” Chen Chien-chih (陳建志), a professor at National Central University’s Graduate Institute of Geophysics, told a press conference yesterday. “The massive mudslide was divided into two ... only 30 seconds after it began — the larger mudslide continued on until it hit the Cishan River [旗山溪] valley, wiping out the northern part of Siaolin. This explains why some survivors said they heard two large bangs that morning.”

He said it was only 110 seconds from the beginning of the mudslide until the northern part of the village was wiped out.

The smaller mudslide went down the valley of a smaller, unnamed creek and formed a barrier lake, Chen said.

“As the mud, sand and stones built up, the barrier lake eventually collapsed 30 to 50 minutes later, burying the southern part of the village,” he said. “Most of the survivors came from the south of the village — they made it out in time, before the second mudslide buried the southern part of the village.”

National Taiwan University geosciences professor Hongey Chen (陳宏宇) said that long-term unstable geological composition was one of the causes of the tragedy.

“Field research found the geological composition of Mount Siandu to be quite unstable as it’s located on the border between shale and sandstone composition, and many geological layers there are actually leftover debris from ancient mountain collapses that occurred thousands of years ago,” Hongey Chen said. “If nothing happens, nothing happens — but if exceptionally heavy rainfall occurs, unstable layers can be washed down at any time.”

He said that as many as 92 other communities in Nantou, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Taitung counties are also under threat from unstable geological compositions.

I posted on Siaolin last year, translating a presentation on the diversion project many villagers claim to be the cause of the disaster. The Public Construction Commission reported earlier this year, saying that rainfall, not construction, caused the disaster. To wit:

Lee said the report’s conclusion was also based on the fact that the amount of explosives used to blast the tunnel was insufficient to have caused tremors large enough to lead to disaster.

The largest amount of explosives used at any one time was 182kg, less than the tremor caused by the 2006 Hengchun Earthquake, the equivalent of 475 million kilograms of explosives.

Commonwealth Magazine had an in-depth piece on the region's complex geology shortly after the disaster....

When there is too much precipitation, the environment's capacity to absorb it becomes overwhelmed.

"That's especially true in the Gaoping River's midstream and downstream areas, where the geological structure is a mix of sandstone, mudstone and shale. The terrain is not only easily loosened and vulnerable to collapse, it features dip slopes and multiple faults and is traversed by a fracture zone, conditions conducive to the entire side of a mountain sliding down," Chen explains. The result was widespread flooding, from the Cishan River Valley, encompassing Namasia Township and Siaolin Village, where hundreds were buried alive during Typhoon Morakot, to the Laonong River Valley, including Liouguei Township and the hot spring resort town of Baolai.

And a warning for the future....

Dr. Huei-long Wu, the director general of the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau, estimates that the flooding last August created about 1.2 billion cubic meters of debris in the disaster area that stretched south of Jiayi County and into Taidong County. But only about a third of that, or 400 million cubic meters, actually made its way into rivers, with the rest remaining upstream or at midstream. Thus, the next big storm could trigger even bigger debris flows, Wu believes.

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Daily Links

• Cilantro, that ubiquitous spice in Taiwan: why you might hate it
• The Economist asks what makes a country
• China is probing possible iron ore supplier monopoly. Because there is nothing like a one-party state complaining about monopoly behavior.
• Big anti-ECFA rally slated for June 6
• Taiwan should welcome Chinese students to boost competitiveness, says the MOE, even though it is unlikely that Taiwan students will study in China, says MOE.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Quakes Galore Lately

Scott Oakes passed around this link to the CWB site listing recent quakes -- seems like the fault off I-lan there has been very active of late. To wit:

Date -- time -- magnitude -- location
2009/07/17 02:42 5.0 64.4 km E of Hualien City
2009/07/16 18:48 5.2 55.8 km ENE of Hualien City
2009/07/15 18:53 4.1 29.0 km WSW of Hualien City
2009/07/15 18:37 5.0 19.6 km SW of Hualien City
2009/07/14 11:24 4.0 32.1 km NNE of Hualien City
2009/07/14 04:28 5.1 58.7 km ENE of Hualien City
2009/07/14 02:05 6.3 57.1 km E of Hualien City
2009/07/14 02:02 4.0 33.0 km NNE of Hualien City

On the original page the location links to maps with additional data.

Hope all this activity doesn't portend something major.

Treasure trove: This government website with posters about local active faults, geological prospecting, etc, in English and Chinese. Beautiful stuff there, and incredibly informative.

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921 Memorials: the Shihgang Dam

Not far from the Shihgang Dam, a group of men were playing croquet in a grassy space among the reeds and farms along the river.

Central Taiwan is filled with relics. Not historical relics, or religious remains, but structures laid to waste by the 921 earthquake, and then preserved by the miracle of public construction funds as parks and memorials. The Shihgang Dam, outside of the small town of Shihgang east of Fengyuan, is one of many such sites.

My son atop the Dam

The Dam was finished in 1977. Roughly 350 meters long and 25 meters high, according to the signs at the site, the quake raised one abutment 12 meters, utterly wrecking one side of the dam. It no longer has the ability to perform flood regulation, and is now used only for irrigation. A new weir constructed upstream has taken over its flood duties. It remains an important water source for Changhua County, according to one government website. Many local government websites promote it as a tourist site ('the mighty Shihgang Dam"). Having experienced it in person, I can only say that the target market must consist of some terribly thrill-starved tourists.

The entrance to the memorial at the Dam, with "921" emblazoned on the concrete walkway. The Dam lies along one of the scenic bikeways in the area. Since I often bike in the area, I decided to visit the Dam with my son this morning as we passed by on our way home.

The park preserves part of one wrecked abutment.

Another view of the wreck.

Signs give some idea of what happened. The sign says that before the earthquake the Dam was at 272 meters, and after, 284 meters.

The current dam, seen from the reservoir side.

As you ascend the (metal) stairs to the top of the Dam, you see this warning. A common problem at tourist sites is that the signage is not made to last, and looks awful after a couple of years.

Downstream from the dam are some lovely rock formations.

Looking over the reservoir towards the mountains.

Dressed up as a broken leaf, a butterfly rests on one of the fences of the little park.

Downstream from the dam, a lone fisherman takes a chance on a pool of water.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!