The biggest earthquake in Taiwan in at least 25 years left at least nine people dead on Wednesday. Dozens of people are still missing and the number of injured is increasing. At the same time, the earthquake trapped dozens of workers in quarries, some residents climbed out of the windows of damaged buildings.
The natural disaster, which injured more than a thousand people, was concentrated on the east coast. The most affected area was the rural mountainous district of Chua-lien. The ground floors of several buildings were crushed, the AP News server describes. Rescuers spent the day searching for people who might be trapped and using excavators to stabilize damaged buildings.
In the capital, Taipei, located about 150 kilometers from Hualien, parts of older buildings collapsed and schools there had to evacuate their students to sports fields. The children wore yellow safety helmets, but some of them also covered themselves with textbooks to protect themselves from falling objects, as the shaking continued.
“I was used to earthquakes. But today was the first time an earthquake scared me to tears. I’ve never felt such strong shaking before, it woke me up,” one Taipei resident, whose apartment is on the fifth floor, told AP News.
According to Taiwanese seismologists, the earthquake had a magnitude of around 7.2 on the Richter scale. The epicenter of the tremors was located 18 kilometers southeast of the port of Chua-lien in the east of the island. The earthquake struck shortly before eight o’clock in the morning, that is two in the morning of our time.
