Wednesday’s powerful earthquake in Taiwan caused at least seven deaths and over 700 injuries, damaging numerous buildings and leading to tsunami warnings in Japan and the Philippines, which were later lifted.
Authorities stated that the earthquake was the most powerful to hit the island in decades and cautioned about potential aftershocks in the coming days.
“The earthquake is close to land and it’s shallow. It’s felt all over Taiwan and offshore islands,” said Wu Chien-fu, director of Taipei’s Central Weather Administration’s Seismology Center.
Strict building regulations and widespread public disaster awareness appear to have staved off a major catastrophe for the earthquake-prone island, which lies near the junction of two tectonic plates.
Wu said the quake was the strongest since a 7.6-magnitude struck in September 1999, killing around 2,400 people in the deadliest natural disaster in the island’s history.
Wednesday’s magnitude-7.4 quake hit just before 8:00 am local time (0000 GMT), 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 kilometres.
Three people among a group of seven on an early-morning hike through the hills that surround the city were crushed to death by boulders loosened by the earthquake, officials said.
Separately, the drivers of a truck and a car died when their vehicles were hit by tumbling boulders, while another man died at a mine.
The National Fire Agency said all the deaths occurred in Hualien county, and that so far 736 people had been injured in the quake, without specifying how seriously.
Social media was awash with shared video and images from around the country of buildings swaying as the quake struck.
“It was shaking violently, the paintings on the wall, my TV and liquor cabinet fell,” one man in Hualien told broadcaster SET TV.
Dramatic images were shown on local TV of multi-storey structures in Hualien and elsewhere tilting after the quake ended, while a warehouse in New Taipei City crumbled.
The mayor there said more than 50 survivors had been successfully plucked from the ruins of the structure.
Local TV channels showed bulldozers clearing rocks along the main route to Hualien, a mountain-ringed coastal city of around 100,000 people that has been cut off by landslides.
The main roads leading to the city pass through an extensive series of tunnels — some of them kilometres long — and officials said many people and vehicles could be trapped inside.
“We must carefully check how many people are trapped and we must rescue them quickly,” president-elect and current Vice-President Lai Ching-te told reporters in Hualien.
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.