At 1:47 AM on September 21, 1999, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake rocked central Taiwan. The so-named “921 Earthquake” marked Taiwan’s deadliest natural disaster since its predecessor, the 1935 Shinchiku-Taichū earthquake.
The 1935 earthquake killed more than 2,400 people and caused over 100,000 people to lose their homes. Thousands of buildings were ruined, including Guangfu Junior High School in Wufeng, Taichung, which is now the home of the 921 Earthquake Museum.
The museum starts in the Chelungpu Fault Gallery, which offers a rare opportunity to see an exposed fault line up close. The fault went through the school’s race track, and visitors could see how the earthquake elevated the ground by more than two meters. The gallery itself is a stunning structure and has won multiple architectural awards. The building has a 100-meter-long curved wall made of massive precast panels. The architects designed it to symbolize stitching the Earth’s wound with steel cables rather than beams and columns.
Guangfu Junior High School is a striking site of collapsed buildings, serving as a sobering reminder of the earthquake’s power. Many visitors recall that the quake struck in the middle of the night, but had it occurred during the day—when students would have been in class—the casualties could have been much worse.
The museum campus hosts several other educational facilities, including the Earthquake Engineering Hall, Disaster Prevention Hall, Reconstruction Records Hall, and an image gallery.
Interactive exhibits allow visitors to experiment with various structural reinforcements to make buildings more earthquake-resistant. Visitors will find a tuned mass damper, a device that reduces structural vibrations by absorbing and dissipating energy, making skyscrapers better able to withstand strong tremors. Another notable display is a section of railway track from the nearby Jiji Line, which the earthquake’s force twisted into an s-shape.
