Fear, anger as aftershocks rattle Taiwan
HUALIEN, TAIWAN — At an elementary school turned shelter in Taiwan's Hualien city some survivors of a tower block left teetering by Tuesday's quake were baffled and angry that such a seemingly solid structure had folded with deadly results.
Emergency workers on Thursday were still pulling bodies from the 12-story Yun Tsui apartment block, which was left tottering at a fifty-degree angle when its lower floors pancaked during the 6.4-magnitude quake. At least six of the nine confirmed dead so far perished there.
"It's unbelievable such a big building toppled," 66-year-old Chen Chienhsiang told AFP as fellow residents huddled under blankets, occasional aftershocks rattling the school and their already frayed nerves.
"We question whether the structural integrity of the building was damaged. Otherwise why else would it fall the way it did?" he fumed.
Like many of those who survived, Chen had to crawl his way out of an apartment suddenly upended by the tremor.
"My TV, a traditional one, was flying like it was in space," he recalled. "All the appliances were really like they're flying."
His apartment was on the sixth floor, but he managed to drag himself out of a window which was suddenly perched closer to the ground as a result of the quake.
"The sixth floor is usually quite high up but when I squeezed myself out the road was right there," he said.
Another resident, 70-year-old Chang Te-ching, said many apartment owners feared that the lower floors of the complex containing a hotel and restaurant may have lacked proper reinforcement to support the building's weight.
"Residential shouldn't be combined with commercial. There are laws regulating this but it hasn't been executed well," he said.
"But being angry only causes you more pain."