Taiwan quake kills 6; Pinay among missing
TAIPEI (AP) — A Filipina caretaker was among 88 people missing after a powerful earthquake struck Taiwan late Tuesday night, leaving at least six people dead in the eastern coast, with buildings tilting on their foundations.
There are around 133,000 Filipinos working in Taiwan. The shallow, magnitude 6.4 quake caused at least four buildings in worst-hit Hualien county to cave in and tilt dangerously, killing four people.
Video footage and photos showed several midsized buildings leaning at sharp angles, their lowest floors crushed into mangled heaps of concrete, shattered glass, bent iron beams and other debris. Firefighters could be seen climbing ladders hoisted against windows as they sought to reach residents inside apartments.
The quake injured 225 people, two dozen of them critically, in Hualien county, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported. The force of the tremor buckled roads and disrupted electricity and water supplies to thousands of households, the National Fire Agency said.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen moved to reassure the Taiwanese public that every effort would be made to look for survivors. In a post on her official Facebook page, Tsai said she arrived in Hualien yesterday to review rescue efforts.
Tsai said she “ordered search and rescue workers not to give up on any opportunity to save people, while keeping their own safety in mind.”
“This is when the Taiwanese people show their calm, resilience and love,” she wrote. “The government will work with everyone to guard their homeland.”
The official news agency said all, but two of the 145 people who could not be reached might be in the Yunmen Cuiti building, a 12-story apartment building, though it said it did not immediately have an estimate of how many were trapped.
Chen Tzai-Tung, a worker with the government disaster center, said it was not safe for rescuers to enter the Yunmen building because it was still leaning farther bit by bit.
The headcount of missing people is based on registered occupants, Chen said by phone, adding that firefighters were evaluating whether to prop up the building with steel.
“It’s still in the process of tilting, so it would be dangerous to go in there,” Chen said. “They’re scrambling for time.”
A hotel employee died when the ground floor caved in at the Marshal Hotel, and another person died in a residential building, the agency reported.–