A strong earthquake in Taiwan on Wednesday caused damage to dozens of structures, triggered tsunami warnings that reached Japan and the Philippines before being withdrawn, and left at least seven dead and over 700 injured.
Ahead of additional tremors in the coming days, officials indicated that the earthquake was the worst to strike the island in decades.
“The earthquake is shallow and occurs near land. The director of Taipei’s Central Weather Administration’s Seismology Center, Wu Chien-fu, stated that the earthquake was felt throughout Taiwan including offshore islands.
The earthquake-prone island, which is located close to the intersection of strict building standards and public disaster awareness, appears to have avoided a big calamity.
Wu stated that the earthquake was the strongest since September 1999, when a 7.6-magnitude earthquake killed almost 2,400 people in the greatest natural disaster in the history of the island.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that the epicentre of Wednesday’s magnitude 7.4 earthquake was 34.8 kilometers deep and located 18 kilometers (11 miles) south of Hualien City, Taiwan. The earthquake occurred just before 8 a.m. local time (0000 GMT).
According to officials, three members of a party of seven who were hiking in the surrounding hills early in the morning were crushed to death by boulders that had been loosened by the earthquake.
Separately, a truck driver lost his life when a landslide struck his car as it neared a nearby tunnel.
According to the National Fire Agency, 736 people have been hurt in the earthquake thus far, however it did not state how serious the injuries were. All of the deaths have happened in Hualien County.
Shared videos and pictures of buildings trembling around the nation went viral on social media as soon as the earthquake occurred.
On local television, there were striking pictures of multi-story buildings in Hualien and other places that were tilting after the earthquake, as well as the collapse of a warehouse in New Taipei City.
More than fifty individuals, according to the mayor there, had been safely pulled from the building’s wreckage.
Local TV stations carried footage of bulldozers removing rocks from the highways leading to Hualien, a 100,000-person coastal city surrounded by mountains that has been cut off by landslides.
One man in Hualien told broadcaster SET TV, “It was shaking violently, the paintings on the wall, my TV and liquor cabinet fell.”
President Tsai Ing-wen announced that the military will be assisting as well as urging coordination between regional and national government entities.