The strongest earthquake in a quarter-century rocked Taiwan during the morning rush hour Wednesday, killing nine people, stranding dozens of workers at quarries and sending some residents scrambling out the windows of damaged buildings.
The quake, which also injured more than 1,000, was centered off the coast of rural, mountainous Hualien County, where some buildings leaned at severe angles, their ground floors crushed. Just over 150 kilometers (93 miles) away in the capital of Taipei, tiles fell from older buildings, and schools evacuated students to sports fields as aftershocks rattled the island nation.
Rescuers fanned out in Hualien, looking for people who may be trapped and using excavators to stabilize damaged buildings. The numbers of people missing, trapped or stranded fluctuated as authorities learned of more in trouble and worked to locate or free them.
Some 70 workers who were stranded at two rock quarries were safe, according to Taiwan’s national fire agency, but the roads to reach them were damaged by falling rocks. Six workers were going to be airlifted on Thursday.
In the hours after the quake, TV showed neighbors and rescue workers lifting residents, including a toddler, through windows and onto the street. Some doors had fused shut in the shaking.
Taiwan is regularly jolted by quakes and its population is among the best prepared for them. But authorities expected a relatively mild earthquake and did not send out alerts. The eventual quake was strong enough to scare even people who are used to such shaking.
“I’ve grown accustomed to (earthquakes). But today was the first time I was scared to tears by an earthquake,” said Hsien-hsuen Keng, who lives in a fifth-floor apartment in Taipei. ”I was awakened by the earthquake. I had never felt such intense shaking before.”
At least nine people died in the quake, according to Taiwan’s fire agency. Most of the fatalities were caused by falling rocks, including four people who were struck inside Taroko National Park, according to the state Central News Agency. One died in a residential building that was damaged, the news agency said.
Farther north, part of the headland of Guishan Island, a tourist attraction also known as Turtle Island because of its shape, slid into the sea. In the capital, Taipei, several people were rescued from a partly collapsed warehouse, and tiles fell from buildings.
Although it was measured at 7.7 in Japan, Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency gave the magnitude of Wednesday’s quake as 7.2, making it Taiwan’s strongest since 1999, when a 7.6-magnitude quake 93 miles (150km) south of Taipei killed 2,400 and injured 10,000.
Hualien’s last big quake in 2022, recorded as 6.9 magnitude, toppled buildings and derailed a train, killing one person and cutting off power for thousands of residents.
Wednesday’s quake caused TSMC, Taiwan’s leading semiconductor manufacturer, which is responsible for the production of most of the world’s advanced semiconductors, to evacuate its production lines, according to Bloomberg News.
Taiwan’s CST said more than 15 aftershocks exceeding a magnitude of 4.0 had occurred so far, but the magnitude had been decreasing.
Damage was visible on some buildings in central Taipei, such as outside the Howard Plaza hotel, where the earthquake had damaged brickwork and dislodged some of the lettering on the hotel’s sign.
Mike Hung Hsu, a hotel guest from the US, said he was woken up by the earthquake. “I’ve never felt this kind of earthquake in LA, even though we have earthquakes pretty often,” he said. “I used to live in Taiwan, in my memory we never had an earthquake like this one.”
Japanese media initially said the quake could trigger waves as high as 3 metres in some areas of Okinawa prefecture, located roughly 1,600km south of Tokyo, but the forecasts were later downgraded. Japan’s meteorological agency lifted all tsunami advisories at around noon local time, while the chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said there had been no reports of injury or damage.
However, an official from Japan’s meteorological agency urged people to continue evacuating until the advisory was lifted. Some residents of the main Okinawa island had evacuated to a nearby US military base, media reports said, while footage showed others watching the sea from the safety of high ground in the prefectural capital, Naha.
The agency has warned that aftershocks, with a similar intensity to those felt in Taiwan, may be likely over the next week.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake’s epicentre was 18km (11 miles) south of Taiwan’s Hualien city at a depth of 34.8km.
The Philippines’ seismology agency on Wednesday issued a tsunami warning for coastal areas fronting the Pacific Ocean, saying they were expected to experience “high tsunami waves” but later lifted the warning.
It has been only three months since a magnitude-7.6 quake and tsunami killed 244 people and caused widespread damage on the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture on the Japan Sea coast.
Japan’s biggest earthquake on record was a 9.0-magnitude undersea jolt in March 2011 off Japan’s north-east coast, which triggered a tsunami that left about 18,500 people dead or missing.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said it was “highly concerned” about the earthquake, which was also felt in coastal cities in China’s Fujian province, and offered to provide assistance.
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