Hundreds of others were injured in the 7.4-magnitude tremor off the island’s east coast, which was felt across the region and prompted tsunami warnings that were later lifted.
HONG KONG — A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Wednesday off Taiwan, killing nine people, injuring hundreds and collapsing buildings in the island’s most powerful tremor in at least 25 years.
NBC News reports that the quake happened around 8 a.m. local time (8 p.m. Tuesday ET) at a depth of about 21 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was about 11 miles south-southwest of Hualien City on the island’s east coast.
At least nine people died and 882 people were injured, Taiwan’s fire department said. Officials said the number of casualties could rise in the coming days.
The earthquake also prompted tsunami warnings that were later lifted in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.
An American who has lived in Taiwan for almost 17 years and arrived in Hualien to visit friends on Tuesday, said she was still feeling aftershocks in the afternoon, hours after the initial quake.
“It was pretty scary,” she told NBC News in an interview. “In all the years that I’ve lived here and in Southern California before that I’ve felt a lot of earthquakes, but this was by far the strongest and the most frightening.”
When things started toppling, another witness said, she and her husband jumped to their feet and ran for the nearest doorway.
“Even there in a doorway on the second floor, we could barely keep our balance, you know, holding both sides of the doorway,” she said. “And all around us things were falling off the walls and off shelves, smashing and crashing everywhere.”
The damage was concentrated in the eastern Taiwan county of Hualien, near the quake’s epicenter, where officials said they were working to free 131 people who were trapped.
Video on social media showed a building in Hualien that appeared to be nine stories tall partially collapsed and left standing at an angle. Another, appearing to have five floors, was similarly situated.
Another American living in nearby Meilun, said that as soon as he cleaned up at home, he headed over to his restaurant in Hualien, the Salt Lick Smokehouse & Grill, where the damage was “quite a bit worse.”
“We lost most of our plates, because they’re all on top of the line, and so they all were shaking and fell off,” he said. “We lost a lot of liquor bottles, beer bottles, glasses, things like that.”
Delickta had been expecting an influx of visitors this weekend, a four-day holiday in Taiwan for a traditional Chinese festival known as Tomb-Sweeping Day when people honor their ancestors. But with the earthquake having disrupted rail services and damaging the main road into Hualien, he said, there’s no easy way to get there at the moment.
“The damage to our restaurant wasn’t so bad, but the economic damage for this town will be — it’ll be more because of the loss of revenue,” said Delickta, who was also in Hualien in 2018 when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake killed 17 people.
The earthquake on Wednesday was felt in all parts of Taiwan, the Central News Agency reported. Metro systems in Taipei, the capital, as well as the cities of Taichung and Kaohsiung, were suspended before mostly resuming, the agency said.
The earthquake knocked out power for more than 87,000 households and was followed by a series of aftershocks, the biggest of which measured 6.5, according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration. The agency listed the magnitude of the initial earthquake at 7.2.
Seismology official Wu Chien-fu said it was Taiwan’s strongest earthquake since 1999, when a 7.6-magnitude tremor killed about 2,400 people.
The USGS said the shaking from the initial quake would have been “very strong” in the Hualien area and strongly felt elsewhere.
A live camera on YouTube at Liyu Lake near Hualien that had been showing a peaceful, sunny scene began to violently shake at 7:58 a.m. local time.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said Wednesday that a disaster response center had been set up and that the National Army would provide support to local governments. Citing the aftershocks, she said, “I would like to remind everyone not to take the elevator for the time being, and to pay more attention to safety.”
TSMC, one of the biggest companies in Taiwan’s crucial semiconductor manufacturing industry, said its safety systems were operating normally and that some fabrication plants had been evacuated as a preventive measure.
“All personnel are safe, and those evacuated are beginning to return to their workplaces,” the company said in a statement. “The company is currently confirming the details of the impact.”
Earlier Wednesday, officials in Japan issued a tsunami warning and an evacuation order for coastal areas of the southern prefecture of Okinawa, warning of waves up to 3 meters (about 10 feet) high. As of late morning, the biggest reported wave was 30 centimeters (about 12 inches) on the Japanese island of Yonaguni, which is close to Taiwan.
A tsunami warning and evacuation orders were also issued in parts of the Philippines.
Credit: NBC News.com
