A series of 15 earthquakes, including two above magnitude 4, hit northeastern and eastern Taiwan over an eight-hour period starting on late Friday, but did not cause any casualties, the Central Weather Bureau reported yesterday.
The bureau advised residents not to panic and said the series of small-scale earthquakes did not indicate a stronger one was imminent.
However, Kuo Kai-wen (郭鎧紋), director of the bureau’s seismology center, said residents in the hilly areas of Yilan County needed to exercise extra caution because the earthquakes may have left the region vulnerable to mudslides following last week’s heavy downpours.
The earthquakes that hit between 10:34pm on Friday and 6:21am yesterday were centered in areas adjacent to Yilan’s Nanao Township (南澳) and Hualien County’s Sioulin Township (秀林), Kuo said.
According to the Seismology Center, nine of the earthquakes struck between 11pm and midnight.
The strongest one, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake, struck at 11:27pm at a depth of 21.6km and was centered 19.4km south of the Nanao seismic observation center.
The tremor reached an intensity of 5 at Taroko Gorge in Hualien County, but lasted for only about 0.3 seconds, the Seismology Center said.
Located at the point where the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates converge, the the Nanao-Sioulin region is prone to such consecutive earthquakes, the center added.
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