An earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale collapsed buildings and caused power outages on the island.
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An earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale left at least four dead and 57 injured in Taiwan, according to AP. It was the biggest earthquake in the last 25 years and caused buildings to collapse, power failures and landslides on the island with 23 million inhabitants.
Initially, Japan and the Philippines activated a tsunami alert, which was however lifted due to no threat being detected.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) placed the magnitude of the earthquake at 7.4, although the counterpart agency in Japan pegged the earthquake at 7.7 on the Richter scale. The epicenter was near the tourist city of Hualien, on the east coast of Taiwan, damaging buildings and trapping residents inside. Several aftershocks prevented rescue and rescue teams from immediately beginning work to extract survivors from the rubble. Emergency services workers are searching for survivors in the worst-affected buildings – some were even tipped over at a 45-degree angle.
According to Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency, which pegged the earthquake at 7.2 on the Richter scale, the epicenter was located around 18 kilometers from Hualien and at a depth of 35 kilometers.
The earthquake was registered at 8:00 local time – one in the morning in Lisbon – and caught many people during rush hour, in the middle of their journey to work.
In the capital, Taipei, several people had to be evacuated from a collapsed building and some older buildings suffered less serious damage. Schools removed students to sports fields and rail transport was suspended, as well as metro service in the capital. Several companies are also not operating.
Shock felt in China
According to AP, the initial panic quickly faded, as Taiwan frequently suffers earthquakes, as it is located in the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an area of intense seismic activity. Still, the violence of the earthquake was enough to scare some locals. “Earthquakes are a common occurrence, I grew up with them,” Hsien-hsuen Keng, a resident of Taiwan, told the AP. “But today, for the first time, I was scared and cried by an earthquake. I was woken up by the earthquake, I had never felt such an intense jolt before,” she highlighted.
The city of Hualien had already been shaken by a strong earthquake in 2018, which collapsed a historic hotel and other buildings. But the worst earthquake in Taiwan’s recent history was 25 years ago, in September 1999: the tremor registered a magnitude of 7.7 on the Richter scale, killed 2,400 people and injured more than 100,000, destroying thousands of buildings. .
Wednesday’s earthquake was also felt in Shanghai and several provinces along the southeast coast of China, according to the Beijing press – Taiwan and China are around 160 kilometers apart. But China has not issued any tsunami warning for the mainland. In the Philippines, residents of the north coast were advised to move to the highlands, but no tsunami was reported in the three hours following the earthquake. In Japan, there are no reports of casualties or damage. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center also reported no tsunami threat for Hawaii.
