A planned by-election for Yunlin County commissioner will be postponed from Oct. 16 to Nov. 6 due to Tuesday's devastating earthquake, officials of the Yunlin County Election Affairs Commission said yesterday.
The officials said the commission was informed of the postponement by the Ministry of the Interior, and added that the county is totally engaged in relief work and efforts to rescue the 40 people still believed trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings.
The county suffered severe damage as a result of the temblor, which hit early Tuesday morning and had a magnitude of 7.6 on the Richter scale, according to the US Geological Survey.
A massive landslide in Yunlin's Tsaoling mountain region buried houses in several villages and dozens of inhabitants are believed to have been buried alive. As of yesterday afternoon, the county's death toll amounted to 43, with 208 people injured, and 27 still missing.
Meanwhile, statistics released by the official rescue operation center in Taipei show that a total of 6,045 buildings have been completely destroyed and another 3,237 have been damaged to some extent.
Yunlin County Magistrate Su Wen-hsiung died of liver failure on Aug. 12. Because Su's remaining tenure exceeds two years, a by-election is needed to decide his successor.
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