The Central Weather Bureau yesterday received about 50,000 views on Facebook after it posted the data that it collected on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation was devastated by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake.
The data showed that the 921 Earthquake hit the nation at 1:47am, with the epicenter being 7km southwest of the bureau’s quake detection center in Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) at a depth of 8km.
The quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged, with the cost of the damage estimated at NT$300 billion (US$10.8 billion at the current exchange rate.)
Photo courtesy of the New Taipei City Public Works Department
Even after 22 years, the quake remains a horrifying memory for many Taiwanese, the bureau said.
The quake was later identified to have been triggered by the movement of the Chelungpu Fault (車籠埔斷層), leaving a 105km-long surface rupture in central Taiwan, the bureau said.
The massive earthquake prompted the government to upgrade the national disaster relief system related regulations, the bureau said, adding that it also inspired the bureau to continue to improve its earthquake early warning system.
“We started developing the earthquake early warning system in the 1990s. By 1999, the system was able to locate an epicenter about 102 seconds after a quake occurred,” the bureau said. “After the 921 Earthquake, we further upgraded the system by installing more quake detectors across the nation and off the coast, and applying cutting-edge computing technology. By 2016, Taiwan became the third country in the world able to issue early earthquake warnings, following Mexico and Japan.”
The system can now disseminate an alert within 10 seconds of a quake being detected, the bureau said.
The bureau’s post drew 50,000 views in the first eight hours, with nearly 200 people recalling their experiences of the night.
“I was in Taipei when the earthquake happened. First I heard the rumbling sound that people usually hear before an earthquake, which was similar to noises produced on construction sites. Then my apartment started shaking vertically and stopped shaking all of a sudden. We thought it was over, until we experienced much more severe shaking. Next thing I knew there was a major power outage, and we did not know about disasters in other parts of the country until the next day,” Amy Hsieh wrote.
Johnson Cho said that he was working a midnight shift at a convenience store when the earthquake struck.
“Two-thirds of the alcohol on the high shelves fell to the ground, and we spent all night cleaning the debris scattered all over the place,” Cho wrote. “As the convenience store was the only place in the neighborhood that had electricity, people who needed to go to work the next day came into the store to buy steamed buns for breakfast. That was the most steamed buns I sold in a day.”
A woman surnamed Wang (王) said that she was living in Taichung’s Taiping District.
“Our house did not collapse, but there was a big crack in the wall. We then spent nearly 10 days sleeping in a tent in an elementary-school playground,” she wrote. “When we eventually returned home, all of us moved our mattresses and pillows down to the ground floor, in case there were strong aftershocks and we needed to run out of the door immediately.”
NATIONAL SECURITY: Authorities are working to confirm the identities of the military personnel involved and investigating possible illegal conduct and regulatory violations Authorities are probing possible national security implications after Kinmen police and immigration officers on Sunday found a Chinese woman allegedly posing as a tourist while engaging in prostitution involving more than 10 military personnel. The woman, surnamed Chen (陳), has since been deported, authorities said, adding that investigators are still working to confirm the identities of those implicated, as the records only listed code names and aliases. The case stemmed from a report received by the Kinmen District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday last week from the Jinhu Precinct of the Kinmen County Police Bureau. On Sunday, police, along with the National Immigration
GLOBALGIVING: ‘ Caving to external pressure is not acceptable for an organization that has cultivated justice reform and human rights for 30 years,’ one NGO said A slew of non-government organizations (NGOs) have withdrawn from the GlobalGiving fundraising platform after it announced it would use “Chinese Taipei” instead of “Taiwan” from next month. The Taiwan Good Rice Association wrote on Facebook on Friday that it was informed on April 28 via a teleconference call of the change, which was made because the platform wanted to operate in China. Taiwan Good Rice is to terminate all cooperative relationships with GlobalGiving in response to the platform’s “unilateral and non-negotiable” decision to remove references to Taiwan, the NGO said. “Taiwan is in the official name of Taiwan Good Rice Association and the
HEAVY WEATHER: Typhoon Jangmi is due to crash straight into the Ryukyus as airlines look to shift flights to larger aircraft or cancel flights to Okinawa entirely Taiwan’s international air carriers announced flight adjustments over the weekend as Typhoon Jangmi is forecast to hit the Ryukyu Islands today and tomorrow. The Central Weather Administration (CWA) upgraded Jangmi from a tropical storm to a typhoon at 8am yesterday, with the eye located 580km south of Naha city. It was moving north at 19kph. Today, China Airlines’ CI-120, CI-121, CI-122 and CI-123 flights between Taoyuan and Naha, Okinawa, have been canceled as well as CI-132 and CI-133 between Kaohsiung and Naha. EVA Air’s BR-112, BR-113, BR-186 and BR-185 flights between Taoyuan and Naha are also canceled. Low-cost carrier Tigerair Taiwan canceled IT-230,
MULTIPRONGED APPROACH: China has sought to pressure Palau across a number of fronts, but the island nation has staunchly resisted overtures to ditch Taiwan Palau has been firm in backing Taiwan despite Chinese pressure that uses tourism economics, cyberattacks and criminal infiltration as tools to threaten the Pacific ally into renouncing its recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state. The Presidential Office yesterday announced that Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) would visit Palau from Saturday to Wednesday next week at the invitation of Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr. Whipps in April said in an interview that China had outspokenly asked Palau to “denounce Taiwan.” “And we have said: ‘We have no enemies, but nobody tells us who our friends are,’” he said. Whipps has told reporters multiple times
RSS