At least nine people died and 882 got injured on Wednesday morning in the strongest earthquake that struck Taiwan in 25 years, reported The Guardian.
The 7.2-magnitude earthquake rocked an are close to city of Hualien, devastating buildings, causing power outages and tsunami warning in southern Japan and the Philippines.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency lifted tsunami warnings for the island chain of Okinawa.
Local United Daily News said that rockslides killed three hikers in Taroko national park and boulders hit a van, leaving the driver dead, as reported by AP report.
The earthquake downed phone networks, cutting contact between the authorities and 50 people in minibuses. 70 other people are trapped, some of which are in a coalmine; however, they are believed to be alive.
The earthquake damaged train lines and trapped people inside Dachingshui tunnel, according to Taiwan’s Centre for Science and Technology (CST).
“It’s not my first earthquake in Taiwan but I’ve never had it done that hard, and then I heard things falling down so I didn’t know what to do, I was like, ‘should I run down the stairs?” said Antoine Rousseaux, who was on the 9th floor of an office building in the centre of Taipei when he felt the earthquake.
Since 1980, 2,000 earthquakes rocked Taiwan with a magnitude of 4.0 or greater. In 2018, Taiwan witnessed it last earthquake which devastated a historic building. The deadliest attack in Taiwan’s recent years was in 1999 which killed 2,400 and injured 100,000.
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