Taiwan Earthquake: Efforts need to be done to make old buildings resilient to quake

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Emergency workers have found the bodies of the last two people who were missing after Tuesday's earthquake in Eastern Taiwan. Officials say that brings the final death toll to 17. That number might have been much higher if Taiwan had not strengthened its building regulations at the turn of the millennium.

Still, as Rian Maelzer reports from Hualien, there is much work to do to make older buildings more resilient to earthquakes.

Crews demolish a hotel badly damaged in last Tuesday's earthquake. 14 died here in another aging building toppled by the quake.

Much as with the earthquake in Southern Taiwan two years ago, only a handful of buildings suffered serious damage, pointing to structural deficiencies.

RIAN MAELZER HUALIEN "Following the deadly 1999 earthquake that killed 2,400 people, Taiwan greatly tightened its building codes to match those of stringent and earth-quake prone jurisdictions such as California and Japan."

But reports suggest some private developers still skirt those tight rules. And while the authorities have worked to make public buildings that pre-date the new codes more quake-proof, private owners are left to choose whether to act.

Taiwan's administration has pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the problem.

CHUANG CHUN-WEI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TAIWAN PROFESSIONAL CIVIL ENGINEERS ASSOCIATION "The laws are already in place. People in these older structures can apply to have experts come to their buildings to assess them, and if the building is dangerous they can apply for subsidies to help strengthen them."

The Asia-Pacific region suffers the largest number of earthquake deaths and levels of preparedness vary widely.

ABHAS K. JHA THE WORLD BANK "We do have great examples in our region like Japan I would single out one country that has done a great job on seismic resilience and preparedness. What keeps me up at night is that many other countries are not prepared, so I would say for example Indonesia and the Philippines. We could do a much better job to make schools safer, making hospitals safer."

And as long as unmodified, decades-old buildings fill the skylines of Taiwan's cities, people will have reason to worry about which ones will not survive the next quake. Rian Maelzer, CGTN Hualien, Taiwan.