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A collapsed restaurant after the earthquake in Yatsushiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, last month. Buildings that collapsed during the quake appeared to be older, traditional timber-framed structures. Photo \/ Chang W. Lee, The New York Times<\/p>\n
After deadly tremors a decade ago, Kumamoto built earthquake-resistant buildings and even trained locals in search and rescue.<\/p>\n
When a 6.8-magnitude earthquake jolted southwestern Japan on July 28, its force mirrored the kind of seismic shocks capable of flattening cities and claiming hundreds or even thousands
\n of lives.<\/p>\n
Yet across the island of Kyushu, the violent shaking destroyed or heavily damaged just a few hundred buildings. One week after the quake, the death toll was 38.<\/p>\n
In Kumamoto, the prefecture near the epicentre, seismologists and local officials credit painful lessons learned a decade ago, when twin earthquakes of similar scale ravaged the region, toppling more than 8000 buildings and ultimately causing more than 270 deaths.<\/p>\n
Experts say the recent Kumamoto earthquake shared significant similarities \u2013 including its ground-shaking intensity, shallow depth and proximity to heavily populated areas \u2013 with the June tremors in Venezuela, which levelled coastal areas, killing more than 6000 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we see that there are huge differences in the number of casualties,\u201d said Katsuichiro Goda, a professor of earthquake engineering at Western University in Canada. Goda, who conducted field reconnaissance in Kumamoto after the 2016 quakes, credits much of that difference to how the prefecture has rebuilt over the past decade, including spending tens of billions of dollars on earthquake proofing.<\/p>\n
In the days following last week\u2019s disaster, two colleagues and I travelled throughout Kumamoto. Damage was scattered across the region: wooden homes had collapsed, roads were warped, and a shopping centre gutted by a post-quake gas explosion stood in ruins.<\/p>\n
But from earthquake-proofed city centres, bridges and homes to communities trained in search and rescue, there were also clear signs of a region well prepared for the worst.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most striking example of this readiness was in Uto, a city of 35,000 situated near the quake\u2019s epicentre. In 2016, the town\u2019s five-storey City Hall warped and partially collapsed, crippling local officials\u2019 ability to co-ordinate disaster response during those critical first days.<\/p>\n
Municipal leaders designed a new City Hall, which opened in 2023, specifically engineered to remain standing through severe earthquakes. Even with last week\u2019s epicentre less than 8km away, the concrete structure and its long stretches of glass windows stood unscathed.<\/p>\n
Beneath the building was one of the secrets to its survival: a seismic isolation structure. In a dimly lit subterranean passage between the foundation and the building above, a web of rubber and steel absorbed and dissipated seismic energy, allowing the earth to shift below while the building above remained relatively still.<\/p>\n
Shogo Mitsui, the mayor of Uto, explained that the new complex embodied a lesson from a decade ago: critical city infrastructure must be focused on during earthquake-proofing so that essential services never lapse during a crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have already been damaged once,\u201d Mitsui, clad in blue and orange emergency response coveralls, said in an interview. \u201cBecause of that, the new building was designed with great consideration.\u201d In the aftermath of the recent quake, Uto residents \u201chave a base to rely on,\u201d he said. \u201cIt leads to a sense of security.\u201d<\/p>\n