Whenever Prof Pennung Warnitchai — renowned expert on structural engineering from the Asia Institute of Technology (AIT) — appears in the media, people assume there must have been an earthquake or some other kind of seismic activity.
Prof Pennung Warnitchai inspects a construction site in Chiang Rai to ensure its structural strength and whether it can withstand a further earthquake.
Since the Nepal earthquake last month, Prof Pennung has resurfaced on various media outlets to give comments and explanations as to how structures in Nepal have been damaged by the disaster. A week after the April 25 earthquake in Nepal, he held a press conference on the one-year aftermath of the quake in Chiang Rai which hit on May 5 last year.
Dubbed an "earthquake engineer", Prof Pennung usually appears in a suit, often with an Oxford-style tie. In everyday life, the soft-spoken professor is not obsessed with monitoring seismic activities and those who wish to hear talk about doomsday will be let down.
"I do not spend every moment of my life monitoring seismic activity. My wife would scold me if I do so," said Prof Pennung who lives in an ordinary two-storey house, that has been built without any structural enhancement.
"Most of the time, I usually learn about earthquakes when the media call me to ask questions and give explanations. Then, I look into the report and later gave comments."
Prof Pennung was one of a few sought-after earthquake experts in Thailand — a country with relatively little record of seismic activity, compared to its neighbouring countries like Myanmar or Indonesia. So far, the hardest-hitting earthquake was the 2004 tsunami followed by the 6.3 Richter scale earthquake in Chiang Rai.
He has conducted research for Thailand Research Fund (TRF) to find ways for Thailand to prepare for natural disasters. His most recent work was the one-year-study to learn how the authorities and villagers in Chiang Rai have dealt with reconstruction.
While earthquakes have appeared to occur more frequently of late, Prof Pennung insists that there is nothing to worry about.
"The amount of earthquakes have not increased. If you look through the records of seismic activity, earthquake patterns are not all that different from the past. One change is that the impact of earthquakes will become more intensive and deadly, partly because of urbanisation and increased construction on fault lines."
The earthquake engineer has visited many earthquake-devastated sites, but while recovery services might examine dead bodies or a damaged landscape, Prof Pennung always checks on something else.
"I will look at the direction in which the walls or houses collapse and cracks on the wall. I try to find out why one building collapses, and why that one building nearby remains safe; why a building moves to one side and not the other direction; why steel rods within concrete become partially cut and why the crack appears the way it does.
"Then, I have to find the root cause of structural failures in order to explain how the building has reacted to the earthquake. If I cannot explain it, it means I do not understand what has happened," he said with a grimace.
Before becoming well known as an earthquake engineer, Prof Pennung was a respected engineer that specialised in bridge building, graduating with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Chulalongkorn University, and a master's and doctorate from University of Tokyo on structural dynamics. His expertise lies in earthquake engineering, wind effects on structures, bridge engineering and control of structural vibration.
His daily work is never the same, for example, he recently tested the vibration of 135m-tall chimney at petrochemical factory in Map Ta Phut Industrial Estate, to make sure the chimney could withstand the wind. Another recent assignment was to conduct a test on the structural strength of a Buddha Statue built on the hill on Kanchanaburi province.
Before joining AIT, he worked as an engineer at Hitachi Zosen, a Japanese construction firm overseeing the construction of Rama IX Bridge, the country's first cable-stayed bridge. For many, he emerged as an expert on earthquakes in 1995 after the Kobe Earthquake.
At that time, Prof Pennung, who had just joined AIT, wrote an article about the effect of earthquake, and how the Japanese dealt with the earthquake. In 2002, he received a grant from Thailand Research Fund (TRF) to conduct a study about the affect of earthquakes in Thailand — something unimaginable at that time. For over a decade, the team focused on the impact of an earthquake on the community, especially on infrastructures. The study was subsequently used by the Interior Ministry to revise building codes to be able to withstand earthquake.
Although rules and standard of buildings in Thailand have been improved so as to deal with earthquakes, Prof Pennung said, the reality on the ground is still rather worrying.
"One thing is that there is a possibility that a serious earthquake could take place in Thailand. Another worrying aspect is that some buildings in Thailand have weak spots that make them unable to withstand earthquakes," he commented.
Despite efforts to revise laws in order to enforce improved construction standards, earthquake resistibility is still not a priority among Thai engineers, architects and real estate developers.
"I think all sectors must try to improve the quality of buildings and houses. We cannot rely on the state to help us. After all, the art of dealing with earthquakes is that we need to empower ourselves with knowledge and make our home strong. We need to help ourselves first."
