Five dead, 60 missing in Taiwan earthquake
RESCUERS combed through the rubble of collapsed buildings yesterday, as they searched for about 60 people missing after a strong earthquake killed at least five near the Taiwanese tourist city of Hualien overnight.
The magnitude 6.4 quake, which hit near the coastal city just before midnight on Tuesday, also injured 243 people and collapsed four buildings, officials said.
Hualien mayor Fu Kun-chi said the number of people missing was now close to 60. Many were believed to be still trapped inside buildings, some of which were tilting precariously, after the quake hit.
At the city’s Marshal Hotel, rescuers trying to free two trapped Taiwanese pulled out one alive, but the other was declared dead.
Among the injured were mainland Chinese, Czech, Japanese, Singaporean and South Korean nationals.
“This is the worst earthquake in the history of Hualien, or at least over the past 40 years I’ve been alive,” said volunteer Yang Hsi Hua.
“We’ve never had anything like this, we’ve never had a building topple over. Also, it was constantly shaking, so everyone was really scared, we ran to empty open spaces to avoid it.”
Aftershocks with a magnitude of at least 5.0 could rock the island in the next two weeks, the government said. Smaller tremors rattled nervous residents throughout the day.
Residents waited and watched anxiously as emergency workers in fluorescent orange and red suits and wearing helmets searched for residents trapped in apartment blocks.
Hualien is home to about 100 000 people. Its streets were buckled by the quake, with around 40 000 homes left without water and around 1 900 without power. Water supply had returned to nearly 5 000 homes by noon, while power was restored to around 1 700 households.
Emergency workers surrounded a badly damaged 12-storey residential building, a major focus of the rescue effort. Windows had collapsed and the building was wedged into the ground at a roughly 40-degree angle.
Rescuers worked their way around and through the building while residents looked on from behind cordoned-off roads. Others spoke of the panic when the earthquake struck.
“We were still open when it happened,” said Lin Ching-wen, who runs a restaurant near a damaged military hospital.
“I grabbed my wife and children and we ran out and tried to rescue people,” he said.
A Reuters video showed large cracks in the road. – Reuters