Rescuers search for missing
Country’s worst tremblor in 25 year kills 10, injures over 1,000
Rescuers searched Thursday for missing people and worked to reach hundreds stranded when Taiwan’s strongest earthquake in 25 years sent boulders and mud tumbling down mountainsides, blocking roads. Ten people died and more than 1,000 were injured.
The powerful quake struck during the morning rush hour a day earlier, sending schoolchildren rushing outdoors and families fleeing their apartments through the windows. The ground floors of some buildings collapsed, leaving them leaning at precarious angles. Though the island is regularly rattled by earthquakes and generally well prepared, authorities did not send out the usual alerts because they were expecting a smaller temblor.
Some 200 residents of Hualien County near the epicentre were staying in temporary shelters, and the main road linking the county to the capital, Taipei, was still closed Thursday afternoon, but much of Taiwan’s day-to-day life returned to normal.
Some local rail service to Hualien resumed, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., one of the world’s most important manufacturers of computer chips, restarted most operations, the Central News Agency reported.
Nearly 1,100 people were injured in the quake. Of the 10 dead, at least four were killed inside Taroko National Park, a tourist attraction famous for canyons and cliffs in mountainous Hualien about 150 kilometres from Taipei. One person was found dead in a damaged building and another was found in the Ho Ren Quarry. Rescuers also carried out the body of a man, who had severe wounds on his head, from a hiking trail.
Hundreds of people were stranded when rocks and mud blocked the roads leading to their hotel, campground or work site — though most were safe while they awaited rescue. It wasn’t clear Thursday if any people were still trapped in buildings.
Liu Zhong-da, a 58-year-old construction worker, and his colleague were on their way to work on a road in the national park and were inside a tunnel when the quake hit. A boulder blocked their exit and they were trapped along with some other people.
“We almost got covered up,” Liu said. “No communication could be made (to the outside world).”
Liu and his colleague were rescued Thursday afternoon and received a quick medical checkup outside the park.
About 60 workers who had been unable to leave a quarry because of damaged roads were also freed, authorities said. Six workers from another quarry were airlifted out.
Some 700 people remain cut off, the vast majority of them employees and guests at a hotel in the national park. Authorities said they were safe and had food and water, and that work to repair the roads to the hotel was nearly finished. Another 10 workers from the same hotel were stranded elsewhere in the park, after most of the others in the group were rescued or managed to walk out.
Authorities said they were unable to contact about 15 people, and their condition was not known. Numbers have fluctuated frequently as authorities have learned of more people in trouble and rescued others.
In the city of Hualien on Thursday, workers used an excavator to stabilize the base of a damaged building, as chickens pecked among potted plants on the flat roof slanting at a severe angle.
Mayor Hsu Chen-wei previously said 48 residential buildings were damaged in the quake.
The earthquake was the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years, measured at magnitude 7.4 by the U.S. Geological Survey.
One Canadian missing, two rescued
Taiwan’s top diplomat in Ottawa says a Canadian is missing after the powerful earthquake that hit the island this week, while two tourists from Canada have been “successfully rescued” from a national park.
Taiwan’s representative to Canada, Harry Tseng, says he has no details about the missing person but the rescued Canadians, who were previously reported to be on a hiking trail in the Taroko Gorge, don’t have serious injuries.