Taiwan search for survivors as quake kills 7
Print Edition
RESCUERS combed through the rubble of collapsed buildings yesterday searching for dozens of people missing after a strong earthquake killed at least seven near Taiwan’s popular tourist city of Hualien.
The magnitude 6.4 quake, which hit near the coastal city just before midnight on Tuesday, injured 260 people and caused four buildings to collapse, officials said.
Emergency responders were focusing on a 12-story apartment block and a nearby hotel, both of which were leaning dangerously with their lower floors pancaked after the quake hit the city.
The island’s fire agency said seven people were killed across the city, and 260 were injured. Some 67 people remained unaccounted for late yesterday evening.
There were grave concerns for the badly leaning Yun Tsui residential building, which also housed a restaurant, shops and a hostel.
Dozens of residents — and several pets — were rescued with ropes, ladders and cranes. But fire department staff at the site said at least four bodies had been pulled out of the building in the day.
Of those still missing, the Hualien disaster relief center said, 39 are residents at the apartment block and 13 are guests at the Beauty Stay Hotel, which is on the bottom floors of the Yun Tsui building.
One of the people killed at the apartment block was a woman from China’s mainland, authorities said.
Officials temporarily suspended rescue efforts over fears the building might slip further as engineers raced to push large concrete blocks and steel bars to support the leaning side.
Rescue efforts continued as night fell, with emergency responders wielding crowbars and torches to search the lower floors for survivors.
Continual aftershocks forced rescuers searching the apartment block to run for safety every time they struck. The responders would go back inside when the tremors stopped.
The strongest of them was a shallow 5.7-magnitude quake that was felt as far away as the city of Taipei, around 120 kilometers north of Hualien.
One resident who lives nearby said he watched the tower block partially collapse.
“I saw the first floor sink into the ground. Then it sank and tilted further and the fourth floor became the first floor,” said Lu Chih-son, 35, who saw 20 people rescued from the building.
Chen Chih-wei, 80, said he was sleeping in his apartment on the top floor of the building when the quake struck.
“My bed turned completely vertical. I was sleeping and suddenly I was standing,” he said.
Chen said he managed to crawl to a balcony to wait for rescue, adding that the quake was the strongest he had felt in more than five decades of living in Hualien.
At the Marshal Hotel, which was also leaning and badly damaged, at least two people were killed when the lower floors collapsed. But most residents got out and authorities said they believed no more people were trapped inside.
Hualien is one of Taiwan’s most popular tourist hubs as it lies on the picturesque east coast rail line and near the popular Taroko Gorge.
The government said tourists from China’s mainland, Czechs, Japanese, Singaporeans and South Koreans were among the injured.
Some 830 people were in shelters, officials said, while 1,900 houses were without power.
The quake hit just before midnight around 21 kilometers northeast of Hualien. It followed almost 100 smaller tremors to have hit the area in the last three day.
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