The last two bodies of people killed in the magnitude 6.0 Hualien earthquake on Feb. 6 were recovered yesterday from the rubble of a collapsed building that is being razed, bringing an end to the drawn-out search and recovery effort.
Grandparents Ding Wenchang (丁文昌), 76, and He Fenghua (何鳳華), 75, were part of a five-member Chinese family staying in the Beauty Inn (漂亮生活旅店), a hostel with rooms on the first and third floors of the 12-story Yun Men Tsui Ti (雲門翠堤) building.
Rescuers said the couple’s bodies were found lying on a bed and were sent to a local mortuary after being taken from the rubble.
Photo: CNA
The bodies of the other family members, Yang Jie (楊捷), 39, Ding Shouhui (丁守慧), 40, and their 12-year old son Yang Haoran (楊浩然) were recovered on Feb. 10.
Hualien County Fire Department head Lin Wen-jui (林文瑞) said rescue workers were able to reach the bodies of Ding and He early yesterday after heavy machinery broke through the ceiling of the building’s fourth floor.
Due to the bodies’ decomposition, sanitation workers were called in to spray disinfectants over the site before rescue workers dug through the rubble with their hands and light equipment to retrieve the couple, Lin said.
The bodies had been trapped under a pillar, which had tilted to one side during the quake and search teams had been gradually dismantling over the past two weeks.
Rescue teams in Hualien ended their search and rescue operations on Feb. 11, 106 hours after the earthquake, and began demolition of the building after discovering that they could not reach the bodies of Ding and He because of the tilted pillar and other debris.
The quake killed 17 people and injured 285.
Fourteen of those killed were in the Yun Men Tsui Ti building.
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