Four people were injured in a magnitude 5.6 earthquake that hit southern Taiwan early yesterday, while a power outage caused by the temblor was resolved shortly afterward, authorities said.
One person in Tainan and three people in Kaohsiung sustained minor injuries in the earthquake and were sent to hospitals for treatment, the National Fire Agency said.
The earthquake also left about 50,000 households in eastern Tainan without electricity, but power was quickly restored, Tainan authorities said.
Photo copied by Wang Chun-chung, Taipei Times
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), Taiwan’s two leading semiconductor foundries, said that their operations in Tainan were only affected to a minimal degree by the earthquake.
The nation’s strongest earthquake so far this year, centered off the coast of Tainan, jolted residents in the southern municipality just one year after 117 people were killed in a strong earthquake that hit Tainan and Kaohsiung.
The epicenter of yesterday’s earthquake, which struck at 1:12am, was 12.2km southwest of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 18.4km, Central Weather Bureau seismology data showed.
A local intensity level of 6 was felt in Tainan, which has a population of 1.88 million, the bureau said.
Taiwan’s intensity scale, which ranges from zero to seven, measures the degree to which the earth shakes at a particular location.
In Kaohsiung and Pingtung County south of the epicenter and Chiayi, Yunlin and Changhua counties north of the epicenter, local intensity levels of 3 to 4 were felt, the bureau said.
There have been no reports of major damage following the earthquake, Tainan and Kaohsiung authorities said.
In Tainan, a few cases of ceiling damage and people being trapped in elevators were reported.
Aftershocks of various magnitudes could occur over the next two weeks, Central Weather Bureau Director-General Shin Tzay-chyn (辛在勤) said.
Early yesterday there was a magnitude 4.2 aftershock, he said.
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