Nine people died in the major 7.4-magnitude earthquake that struck eastern Taiwan on Wednesday morning. Over 1000 people have been injured in the earthquake which was the strongest to strike the self-ruled island in 25 years, prompting tsunami warnings for the self-ruled island as well as parts of southern Japan and the Philippines.
A report by TaiwanPlusNews said that the person who died was crushed under the landslide, citing fire department officials. The quake hit just before 8:00am local time, with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) putting the epicentre 18 kilometres (11 miles) south of Taiwan’s Hualien City, at a depth of 34.8 km.
A separate report by Reuters said twenty people are trapped in the 26 buildings that have collapsed, which are more than half in Hualien. Rescue work continues in those affected areas.
Residents of Taipei said aftershocks could still be felt in the self-ruled island’s capital. Taiwan’s central weather administration said 25 aftershocks have been recorded so far.
Taiwan television stations showed footage of buildings at precarious angles in Hualien, where the quake as people were going to work and school. The quake had a depth of 15.5km (9.6 miles), according to Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration.
The Japanese weather agency said several small tsunami waves reached parts of the southern prefecture of Okinawa. The weatherman later downgraded the earlier tsunami warning to an advisory and said the earthquake’s magnitude was 7.7 in the Richter Scale.
The Philippines Seismology Agency also issued a warning for residents in coastal areas of several provinces, urging them to evacuate to higher ground.
Taiwan also issued a tsunami warning, but reported no damage from that, and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii later said the risk of damaging tsunami waves had now largely passed.
The earthquake was also felt in the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou and Ningde.
“I wanted to run out, but I wasn’t dressed. That was so strong,” said Kelvin Hwang, a guest at a hotel in the capital, Taipei, while speaking to news agency AFP, who sought shelter in the lift lobby on the ninth floor.
Strict building regulations and disaster awareness appear to have staved off a major catastrophe for the island, which is regularly hit by earthquakes as it lies near the junction of two tectonic plates. Nearby Japan, which lies in a high seismic region, experiences around 1,500 jolts every year.
The Japanese weatherman earlier issued a warning for tsunami waves as high as three metres for the southern Japanese islands, including the Miyakojima island.
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