Seven people were killed and 260 injured after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County on Tuesday night, the Central Emergency Operation Center said yesterday.
The center’s data showed that four buildings in Hualien City had collapsed or tilted due to the earthquake: the Marshal Hotel (統帥飯店), the Yun Men Tsui Ti (雲門翠堤大樓) commercial and residential building and two apartment buildings on Guosheng 6th Street.
As of 9:30pm yesterday, 67 people were reported missing, 39 of whom were thought to have been in the Yun Men Tsui Ti building.
Photo: CNA
However, rescue efforts at the Yun Men Tsui Ti building have been precarious, with the building tilting ever more toward the ground amid multiple aftershocks.
A total of 31,558 households were waiting for their water supply to resume, while 186 households were left without electricity, the data showed.
About 560 people have been placed in shelters after being evacuated from their homes on Tuesday night, the data showed.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA
Huang Jui-tien (黃瑞添), a resident of Hualien County’s Jian Township (吉安), told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview that even though there have been aftershocks since a magnitude 5.8 earthquake on Sunday night, he felt that Tuesday’s earthquake was much bigger, because things started to shake vertically instead of horizontally.
Huang said he and his family rushed out of their home during the earthquake and returned to find that all of the bonsai plants in the house had fallen to the ground.
“We were afraid to go back to sleep again, because the aftershocks continued almost nonstop,” he said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Most restaurants and shops in the area were closed yesterday, Huang said, adding that convenience stores had run out of hot food.
Asked what his family would do, as the aftershocks are expected to continue over the next few weeks, he said: “Well, life has to go on.”
The Ministry of National Defense has deployed 661 military personnel to assist rescue efforts.
Photo: Lin Hsin-han, Taipei Times
Central Weather Bureau (CWB) data showed that Tuesday’s earthquake, which measured magnitude 6.0 on the Richter scale, occurred at 11:50pm at a depth of 10km and its epicenter was 18.3km northeast of Hualien County Hall, which is near the coast.
The earthquake’s seismic intensity was level 7 in Hualien County’s Taroko Gorge (太魯閣峽谷) and Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳).
Seismic intensity refers to the degree of vibration felt at a location during an earthquake.
On the nation’s zero-to-seven seismic intensity scale, level 7 indicates shaking so violent that people cannot move at will.
As of 5pm yesterday, the bureau had recored 159 aftershocks since Tuesday night’s big quake.
The bureau had previously said that Sunday’s magnitude 5.8 earthquake was the main earthquake and that it expected tectonic movement to gradually cease after multiple aftershocks.
However, it changed its evaluation yesterday, saying that Tuesday’s magnitude 6.0 temblor was the main earthquake and Sunday’s was one of its 94 foreshocks.
“This seismic sequence has completely changed the way we think about earthquakes in this region,” Seismological Center Acting Director Chen Kuo-chang (陳國昌) said.
Chen confirmed that Tuesday’s earthquake was the largest in Hualien County since the bureau began conducting more precise observations of earthquakes in 1972.
The bureau said that the earthquake occurred as a result of an interaction between the Philippine Sea Plate and Eurasia Plate, with some seismologists saying that this might trigger movement of the Milun Fault, along which the damaged buildings were constructed.
In related news, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that 31 foreign nationals were reportedly affected by Tuesday’s earthquake, including 14 South Koreans, nine Japanese, two Czechs, two Singaporeans and one Philippine national.
The nationalities of the remaining three have yet to be confirmed, the ministry said in a statement.
The two Singaporeans and 13 South Koreans were in a temporary shelter at a stadium in Hualien, with only one of them, a South Korean, having sustained minor injuries, it said.
The other 16 foreign nationals received treatment for various injuries at four hospitals in the Hualien area and were later discharged or would soon be discharged, the statement said.
The injuries ranged from wrist and foot injuries to dry powder inhalation, it added.
One South Korean woman living in the Yun Men Tsui Ti building was rescued at about 10am yesterday, the statement said.
Additional reporting by CNA
TIMING: 'The CHIPS Act funding is crucial for us. In other words, if the act’s passage is delayed for too long, we will certainly need to adjust,’ chairwoman Doris Hsu said GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓) plans to start construction on a US$5 billion wafer fabrication facility in Texas in November, after passage of the US$52 billion Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act. The fab would be the largest of its kind in the US and one of the largest in the world, with a monthly capacity of 1.2 million wafers, GlobalWafers said, adding that the investment would be the first new fab in the US in more than 20 years and critical to closing a semiconductor supply chain gap. The world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier said the project, which
Samsung Electronics Co yesterday commenced mass production of 3-nanometer chips that are more powerful and efficient than predecessors, beating rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to a key milestone in the race to build the most advanced chips in the world. South Korea’s largest company said in a statement that it was beginning with 3-nanometer semiconductors for high-performance and specialized low-power computing applications before expanding to mobile processors. By applying so-called Gate-All-Around transistor architecture, Samsung’s 3-nanometer products reduce power consumption by up to 45 percent and improve performance by 23 percent compared with 5-nanometer chips, it said. Samsung’s push to be first
Three to four tropical storms or typhoons are expected to hit Taiwan this year due to a weak La Nina effect in the northwest Pacific Ocean, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday, as typhoon season begins next month. Taiwan’s typhoon season generally lasts from July to September, with most typhoons occurring in August. Weather Forecast Center Director Lu Kuo-chen (呂國臣) told a news conference that a weakening La Nina is expected to have less of an effect on Taiwan. “The climate simulation we conducted, and those conducted by other meteorological agencies around the world, showed that the number of typhoons that
HYBRID THREAT: Lauding the alliance’s global vision in facing up to China’s challenges, MOFA said that Taiwan would continue to bolster cooperation with democratic allies NATO has for the first time singled out China as one of its strategic priorities for the next decade, warning about its growing military ambitions, confrontational rhetoric toward Taiwan and other neighbors, and increasingly close ties to Russia. In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said it appreciates the alliance’s global vision in facing up squarely to the systemic challenges posed by China. While Russia’s war against Ukraine has dominated discussions at the NATO summit in Madrid, China on Wednesday earned a place among the Western alliance’s most worrying security concerns. “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear