More Than 600 People Trapped Following Taiwan’s Magnitude-7.2 Earthquake- BBC
660 people are trapped or stranded, up from 100, following Taiwan’s magnitude-7.2 earthquake, as people in mountainous regions started to get phone signals back, reported BBC.
Rescue operations in Taiwan are still underway to rescue the trapped individuals following the earthquake that struck the country Wednesday.
Many people are trapped in remote areas like remote hotels, so food has been airdropped to those people, while officials find the best way to rescue them.
Back to the city, workers are using heavy equipment to bring down the already-damaged buildings. BBC witnessed workers getting car-sized boulders out of the way close to railway in order to restore the train services.
They are also trying to support 10-storey Uranus building which has been leaning, using gravel and rocks.
Helicopters helped rescue some of the people who remained trapped in tunnels and near a national park, yet 34 are still missing.
At least nine people died and 882 injured on Wednesday morning in the strongest earthquake that struck Taiwan in 25 years, reported The Guardian.
Taiwan’s magnitude-7.2 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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