At least nine people dead and over 800 injured in a powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Taiwan on Wednesday. Officials warned of more tremors in the days ahead.
The quake appears to be the strongest since September 1999, when a 7.6-magnitude took lives of 2,400 people in the deadliest natural disaster in the island’s history.
Strict building regulations and widespread public disaster awareness appear to have staved off a major catastrophe.
Wednesday’s 7.4 magnitude quake hit before 8:00 a.m. local time (0000 GMT). United States Geological Survey (USGS) put the epicenter 18 kilometers south of Taiwan’s Hualien City, at a depth of 34.8 kilometers.
The number of fatalities include 3 people crushed by loosened boulders on an early-morning hike, a truck and a car drivers hit by landslide and a man who died in a mine. The National Fire Agency did not offer details on the other three deaths, but said all the fatalities had been in Hualien county, adding that 882 people had been injured without specifying how seriously.
President Tsai Ing-wen called for local and central government agencies to coordinate with each other, and said the military would also be providing support as around 100,000 residents Hualien, a mountain-ringed coastal city are cut off. Over 120 people may remain trapped in a series of tunnels on the main road leading to the city.
The eartquake had also been felt in Japan and the Philippines with authorities issuing tsunami warnings, however but by around 10 a.m. (0200 GMT), the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the threat had “largely passed.”
China’s eastern provinces felt strong tremors as well. State news agency Xinhua stated that the country is “willing to provide disaster relief assistance.”
The work in some of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (the world’s biggest chip manufacturer)’s plants was briefly interrupted, while work at construction sites for new plants was halted for the day.
