Rescuers race to save victims ‘buried alive’ by Taiwan earthquake
RESCUERS are racing to save more than 100 people trapped after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Taiwan on Wednesday, including 42 hotel employees caught in a rockfall on their way to work.
The earthquake was felt across Taiwan, but its epicentre was at the eastern coastal city of Hualien, where buildings collapsed and roads, tunnels and railways were damaged.
The hotel employees were traveling along the cross-island motorway that begins in Hualien and stretches across to the island’s west, passing through the Taroko Gorge National Park. Parts of the road there are narrow, windy, and prone to rockfalls.
The workers were located by a drone at about the 100-mile mark of the highway near an area known as the “cave of nine turns”.
Drone footage released yesterday shows a group of people waving flags and calling for help from inside one of the highway’s tunnels surrounded by debris and destroyed roads.
According to Lin Yu-chang, Taiwan’s interior minister, rescuers were 1,000ft away from the area at around 10.30am but continuing aftershocks and rockfalls have slowed the effort.
He said rescuers were expected to reach the area by 6pm yesterday. In the meantime, goods were being delivered to the trapped people. Other people remained trapped inside mines, buildings, or on hiking trails in the area, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.
One miner who was rescued this morning told local media that the earthquake and falling rocks felt “like bullets” and some had witnessed one person being buried alive. The earthquake is the largest Taiwan has experienced in 25 years. According to current government tallies, nine people have died, 1,050 were injured and 34 people are still missing.
Most of the deaths were hikers or people inside vehicles killed by falling rocks, but one person was found dead inside a collapsed building after going inside to try to rescue her cat, local media has reported.
Meanwhile, footage has continued to emerge showing the violent shaking as the tremor and aftershocks rocked the island. One clip showed nurses in a hospital scrambling to protect newborn babies as the earthquake shook their cots from side to side.
Another showed drivers narrowly escaping death as giant boulders crashed down off the side off a mountain and onto the road below.
Train service to Hualien was restored today as the traditional tomb-sweeping holiday began.
Several roads and tunnels, however, remain blocked and the government is working to expand maritime service and flights to connect Hualien to northern Taiwan. Home of the popular tourist attraction Taroko Gorge – itself the result of a collision of massive tectonic plates – Hualien is no stranger to earthquakes, some resulting in serious damage and deaths. Images from the area’s picturesque mountains on Wednesday showed landslides that sent thick clouds of dust into the sky.
The earthquake was the strongest to hit since 1999 when a magnitude 7.3 tremor killed more than 2,400 people, injured over 11,000 and damaged more than 50,000 buildings.