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by markdown12 hours ago |
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upvoteby klausa12 hours ago|
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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.

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upvoteby amelius12 hours ago|
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Wouldn't the not so strong old buildings have collapsed during previous quakes?
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upvoteby klausa11 hours ago|
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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.

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upvoteby Cthulhu_11 hours ago|
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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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upvoteby SoftTalker6 hours ago|
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Meanwhile here an 80 year old, completely unremarkable house is likely to get declared "historic" and you as the owner can't even change the windows without permission. Tearing it down would be virtually impossible.
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upvoteby kalleboo3 hours ago|
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If only a 7.1 earthquake came along to cull the herd every now and then?
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upvoteby SoftTalker2 hours ago|
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Some of those old houses seem to burn mysteriously. Bad wiring, I suppose.

Then there was the developer who tore down a couple of houses over a weekend before the historical commission had a chance to meet and formally confer historic status on the rotting, worn out properties.

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upvoteby asutekku12 hours ago|
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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.
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upvoteby makeitdouble10 hours ago|
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Yes, but the situation got a lot better and a lot worse...

Sadly there has been a bunch of pretty devastating earthquakes in recent years. In particular in Kumamoto the one in 2016 (magnitude 6.5) was huge and many of the houses built at lower standard or not in great shape anymore got partially or totally wrecked. Right now the house that are left are relatively well built.

The bad news is, that still doesn't help as the cumulative damage can still bring them down, and they're still subject to landslides, water damage, and other second order disastrous events.

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upvoteby markdown11 hours ago|
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Earthquakes didn't start in 1991. The Japanese have always had to live with earthquakes and build accordingly.
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upvoteby klausa11 hours ago|
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For a long time "live with earthquakes and build accordingly" meant "make it easy to rebuild", not "engineer the structures to withstand the earthquakes".
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upvoteby egeozcan11 hours ago|
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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.

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upvoteby Scroll_Swe10 hours ago|
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[flagged]
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upvoteby asutekku9 hours ago|
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The regulations got hardened in 1991. Obviously there has been earthquakes forever, but the buildings were not built to withstand them. That's one of the reasons why Japanese do not buy old homes: they are not earthquake proof.
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upvoteby crest12 hours ago|
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One of the reasons Japan uses wood for construction is that combined with their traditional building techniques it results in earthquake resistant buildings.
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