Will Bangkok fall out of love with skyscrapers after earthquake rocks city? | Earthquakes News

Bangkok, Thailand – In the teeming metropolis that is central Bangkok, Methinee Phoovatis monitored a small computer screen, hoping to find signs of survivors.

Surrounding Methinee, other members of Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) coordinated the dozens of rescue workers shuttling along a path that led to an enormous mound of debris.

The rescue teams worked in shifts, searching for any indications of life under the hill of cement and steel that loomed over them.

“We are just hoping for a miracle that some of the people are still alive,” Methinee, a plan and policy analyst in the DDPM, told Al Jazeera.

It was four days after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake jolted Bangkok on March 28, and as the hours and days passed, the chances of Methinee and her colleagues finding survivors were increasingly slim.

“We are trying our best for the people. Hopefully, they are still alive,” she said, standing next to a whiteboard showing the tally of 73 people that were still missing under the rubble of the unfinished 30-storey building, which was designed to house Thailand’s National Audit Office.

The earthquake that rocked the Thai capital was particularly shallow, just 10km (6.2 miles) deep, which intensified the shock waves on the earth’s surface.

Though situated more than 1,200km (750 miles) from the epicentre in Myanmar where thousands died, the earthquake brought Bangkok to a standstill. Panicked residents of this city of more than 11 million people rushed out into the streets in search of safety as buildings swayed and shuddered.

A month on, life in the Thai capital has returned to normal.

But the dozens of deaths – most of which were at the site of the collapsed audit office building – and the shock of the events of March 28 have prompted concerns for some in Bangkok about the safety of high-rise living in the world’s 12th tallest city.

‘People were screaming’

A sudden feeling of nausea and the swaying of lamps inside his apartment on the ninth floor of a 41-storey building told Harry Yang he was in danger.

“I ran out onto my balcony and everything was shaking,” said the 29-year-old, who has called Bangkok his home since birth.

“People were screaming,” he said.

Dashing down the fire escape stairs, Yang immediately thought of his ageing father who lives on the 32nd floor in another high-rise building in Bangkok and who has issues with mobility.

Although his father, who works as an antique dealer, made it out of the ordeal unscathed, the quake destroyed many of his antiques and left him terrified.

“My dad is 68 years old, he has leg problems, and he needed to climb down” stairs to reach the ground floor, Yang said.

People had good reason to be scared. Video clips on social media showed Bangkok shaking, with debris falling to the ground and water pouring in torrents from skyscraper infinity swimming pools.

Lapaphutch Lertsachanant was in her condominium on the 27th floor when the quake struck.

“The building was literally moving side to side. I really felt at that moment that the building could be cut in half,” Lapaphutch said.

“I really thought that I wouldn’t survive,” she added, recalling her desire to speak to her partner one final time by phone. “I thought I could have my last words with him. He would be with me in my last moments alive.”

Although seismic events in the wider Southeast Asia region are common, the scale of the quake that hit Myanmar – where more than 3,700 people were killed – and shook Bangkok took many by surprise.

Wang Yu, associate professor in the department of geosciences at the National Taiwan University, said Myanmar lies directly on a tectonic fault line, the Sagaing Fault, and the March 28 quake occurred after a strike-slip fault between the India and Eurasian plates.

According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a strike-slip refers to a tectonic fault where two plates move horizontally past each other. Since 1900, the USGS reports that six other large earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or more have occurred within 250km (155 miles) of the epicentre in Myanmar of the March 28 quake.

Bangkok is built on a basin of unstable soil that can increase the effect of these quakes, Wang Yu explained.

“When a seismic wave transmits from the outside into the basin, the amplitude of the seismic wave will be enlarged,” he said.

But the precise reason why the building in central Bangkok collapsed remains under investigation. No other building in Bangkok suffered such a catastrophic failure, although many sustained structural damage. Officials in Thailand have launched an investigation to assess whether proper building protocols were followed.

‘Earthquake Resistant Design’

Thailand first introduced seismic regulations on buildings in 1997. In 2007, new legislation specified that buildings higher than 15 metres (49ft) in high-risk areas like Bangkok must be built to withstand quakes of up to magnitude 7.0. Two years later, in 2009, the Thai Department of Public Works and Town and Country Planning introduced a comprehensive “Standard for Earthquake Resistant Design of Buildings”.

Given these building and engineering regulations, questions have been raised over how the almost-constructed building in Bangkok could collapse.

“I think we need to find the root cause so at least we can learn some lessons and improve building regulations,” Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt said shortly after the quake, as local authorities fanned out across Thailand to test buildings and assess whether they were still structurally sound.

So far, the majority have been deemed to meet safety standards.

On April 3, just six days after the earthquake, Bangkok’s Metropolitan Authority declared an end to the “disaster situation” in Bangkok, except for the building collapse site.

Now a month on from the disaster, some residents are still concerned as superficial cracks and other damage to their high-rise residences have contributed to lingering feelings of insecurity.

Despite engineers declaring that his apartment was safe to live in, 32-year-old Varuth Pongsapipatt found the series of cracks running up the walls of his apartment a little unsettling, but he was dealing with it.

“It’s quite scary, but it has no effect on the structure of the building, so it’s OK,” he told Al Jazeera.

With the lift in her condominium out of commission after the quake, Lapaphutch said she was forced to move into her parents’ home for almost three weeks, and she was not in a rush to return to her 27th-floor place.

“I don’t feel I’m safe going back to living in a tall building,” she said.

Harry Yang said his father had refused to return to his 32-floor home, worried that aftershocks may occur.

“My parents are really concerned. My dad has been staying in a hotel since the earthquake happened,” Yang told Al Jazeera earlier this month.

Slow response

Research by Thailand’s National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) after the earthquake found that some 68 percent of respondents were concerned about the stability and safety of buildings.

For some, the effect on the property market was a worry, too.

“I’m more concerned about property prices,” Yang said.

“I think this will have a big impact on the property market and consumer confidence. A lot of people are trying to find a way to move out,” he said.

Following the quake, Thai financial analysts predicted that condominium sales could be hit with potential buyers thinking twice before purchasing a high-rise building in Bangkok, placing further pressure on the country’s property sector.

“The March 28 earthquake is expected to create a windfall for low-rise houses, which are perceived as less vulnerable to seismic events. This trend will mirror the shift seen in 2011 when nationwide flooding led homebuyers to favour condos over low-rise houses,” the Bangkok Post newspaper reported earlier this month.

The quake also exposed serious shortcomings in Thailand’s emergency alert system.

Although an earthquake warning system was supposed to keep the Thai public updated with information, warning messages could only be sent out in batches of 200,000 at a time, creating a bottleneck that slowed down communications in a country of almost 72 million.

Harry Yang said neither he nor his parents received any emergency response messaging. They were forced to search online for information after the quake hit.

Weeks on from the quake, Bangkok resident Lapaphutch also said she had never received any emergency information.

“We really need this kind of system that can alert us,” she said. “Everyone in Thailand should be reviewing these kinds of notifications to make us well prepared.”

The survey by NIDA showed that almost 60 percent of those polled were concerned about the effectiveness of the early warning systems. Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has since called for upgrades to the system to increase the broadcast capacity of the alert batches to 1 million at a time, according to local reports.

Despite the challenges, Thailand emerged from the tremor relatively unscathed.

Just metres from the site of the collapsed 30-storey building, Bangkok’s Chatuchak Weekend Market was already bustling with tourists just days after the quake, and the events seemed almost like a distant memory in a city that never really sleeps.

Harry Yang agreed.

Bangkok residents had initially felt scared, but that would pass, he said.

“Eventually it’s going to come back to normal.”