Taiwan Earthquake: 7.4 magnitude quake hits Taiwan, Nine killed, more than 900 injured

Building collapses, power outages and landslides on the island have been caused by the strongest earthquake in 25 years. Video Below!

Several people are thought to be trapped and awaiting rescue in a coalmine.

A magnitude of 7.2 was given to the quake by Taiwan’s seismological watchdog and 7.4 by the United States, and it hit close to Hualien, a popular tourist destination on Taiwan’s eastern coast.

Hualien Taroko National Park said about a thousand tourists and workers were stranded in the mountains. According to local media reports, 3 pedestrians and a driver died in the landslide that occurred in the park.

People and vehicles are stuck in the Dachingshui tunnel, according to the Taiwanese Center for Science and Technology. School and workplaces were closed across large areas of the city after train lines were damaged. Thousands of homes are without power.

Witnesses in Hualien described driving as rocks dislodged from nearby mountains fell around them, while others rushed outside after feeling the tremors’ force.

Further north, part of the headland of Guishan Island, a tourist attraction also known as Turtle Island because of its shape, has slid into the sea. Tiles fell from buildings in the capital of Taipei after several people were rescued from a partially collapsed warehouse.

It was Taiwan’s strongest since 1999, when a 7.6-magnitude quake killed 2,400 and injured 10,000, even though it was measured at 7.7 in Japan.

The last big earthquake in Hualien, recorded as 6.9 magnitude, toppled buildings and derailed a train, killing one person and cutting off power for thousands of residents.

The quake on Wednesday prompted the Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC to evacuate its manufacturing facilities, according to Bloomberg News.

Taiwan’s CST said more than 15 aftershocks exceeding a magnitude of 4.0 had occurred so far, but the magnitude has been decreasing, but Taiwan’s CST said.

Damage was visible on several buildings in central Taipei, such as outside the Howard Plaza hotel, where the earthquake had damaged brickwork and dislodged some of the lettering on the hotel’s sign.

The US-based Mike Hung Hsu, a hotel guest from the US, described being woken up by the quake. He said, “I have never felt this kind of earthquake in LA, even though we have earthquakes pretty often.” In my memory, we never had an earthquake like this one in Taiwan, I used to live there.

Japanese media initially reported that the earthquake could cause waves as high as 3 meters in the Okinawa Prefecture region, about 1,600 kilometers south of Tokyo, but Towers’ prediction was later reduced.

All tsunami advisories were lifted at noon local time by Japan’s meteorological agency, while the chief cabinet secretary said there had been no reports of injury or damage.

Japan Meteorological Agency officials recommended that people continue evacuating until the warning is lifted. News reports stated that some residents of the main island of Okinawa were evacuated to a military base near the US, while others watched the sea from high in Okinawa prefecture.

The agency has warned that aftershocks with a similar intensity to those felt in Taiwan are likely over the next week.

Video: 7.4 magnitude quake hits Taiwan

According to the USGS, the quake’s epicenter was located 18km (11 miles) south of Taiwan’s Hualien city, at a depth of 34.8km.

The seismology department in the Philippines issued a tsunami alert for coastal areas facing the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, claiming they were likely to encounter “high tsunami waves,” but later lifted the alert.

On the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture, a magnitude-7.6 earthquake and tsunami killed 244 people and caused widespread damage.

A 9.0-magnitude undersea jolt off Japan’s north-east coast in March 2011 was the biggest quake ever recorded in Japan, triggering a tsunami that claimed the lives of 18,500 people.

The China’s Taiwan Affairs Office expressed concern about the quake, which was also felt in coastal towns in the country’s Fujian province, and offered assistance.
Additional reporting from Gregor Stuart Hunter and Amy Hawkins.