45 comments

  4. I’m still kind of blown away by this. I live in Tokyo, and have been through a number of earthquakes that were 7.0 or higher (highest I’ve experienced so far has been 7.3) on the Richter scale, but which were basically no big deal — they shook like hell, and were scary, but there was barely any damage, with the worst of them (the aforementioned 7.3) resulting in loss of power in some places for about an hour, but that was it.

    So to see this kind of damage from a 6.9 seems bizarre to me, especially somewhere like Taiwan with infrastructure very similar to Japan’s, geared toward earthquake safety. I guess it must come down to the shallowness of the quake, as 6 miles is almost unheard of.

    It also goes to show you how weirdly uninformative the Richter scale is compared to the more commonly used Shindo scale in this part of the world — the Shindo scale basically ranks the severity of an earthquake based on how violently it shakes, and varies from town to town, generally lowering in number as you get farther and farther from the epicenter. This earthquake may have “only” been a 6.9 on the Richter scale, but it was a 6+ on the Shindo scale at its epicenter — and the Shindo scale only goes up to 7, with the 2011 megathrust quake in Japan being the only earthquake in the region thus far to ever reach the 7 mark (AFAIK). So for this to hit a 6+ in some places definitely conveys just how nasty a quake it was.

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    5. its just bad construction,this gym is at Taoyuan witch is far from the epicenter only experiencing a magnitude 3 earthquake.
      the celilng was just installed the day before the earthquake hits.

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  10. The interesting thing is you can clearly see the tectonic wave from how the ceiling tiles fell. Glad no one was hurt.

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  11. Based on the video it was only the ceiling that collapsed not the roof. Those of you reporting this on this video need to check to make sure that it was just the ceiling and not the roof because the only thing falling on that gymnasium floor is ceiling tile and insulation and stuff like that nothing to do with the roof. I’m not saying it’s not scary and stuff but you need to be accurate.

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  15. You’d think it’s from a gym that’s near the center of earthquake (with intensity of 6 strong), but in fact it’s from other side of the island where the intensity was only 3 lol.

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  17. I’m live in this city , it’s luckly thats no one was hurt , but I must condemn the gymnasium built by the city hall for cutting corners.

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  18. About this video, the fact is the earthquake center is not at that place, it is on the southeastern side of Taiwan, and the problem is the video is filmed on the gym which is on the westnorthern side of Taiwan. according to the Center Weather Bureau (Which is the official website of Taiwan goverment) Show the east side is around 6.9 lvl, but the west side ONLY around 2~3 lvl.

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  20. The scenario of this film is of a sport center in Taoyuan city in the west of Taiwan just activated for one day. This building has significant design and quality issues, which makes the earthquake look much worse then facts. In fact, the center of this earthquake is located on the east of Taiwan, of which Hualien city is badly damaged injured.

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