More than 130 missing, 18 dead in Taiwan quake

Feb 14, 2016, 07:37

President Ma Ying-jeou visited a hospital and the emergency-response center in Tainan before rushing back to the capital, Taipei, to attend a briefing on the situation. Jian Zhengshun, one of the rescuers, said the work has been hard because the building fell in such a way that part of it is thought to be buried beneath the loosened dirt from the quake.

Rescuers are racing against time to save more than 120 people who are still trapped in the rubble of the building.

The building had 256 registered residents, but more people were estimated to be inside because of the Lunar New Year celebrations scheduled to begin in a couple of days.

However, a magnitude-7.6 quake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.

The quake was particularly destructive because it was very shallow - about 6 miles underground - and the epicenter was on the island, not offshore, said U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Paul Caruso.

Tainan Mayor William Lai said: "Right now we are in the midst of trying to rescue over ten people. I opened my metal door and saw the building opposite fall down", said a 71-year-old neighbour who gave his name as Chang.

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The Taiwanese news website ET Today reported that two buildings toppled in Tainan, and that some water and gas utility pipes had ruptured.

Rescuers pause as they listens for any signs of life as they search for survivors from a collapsed building following a 6.4 magnitude natural disaster in Tainan City, southern Taiwan, 07 February 2016. Other deaths were reported at the site, but details were not immediately available. Over 240 people have already been rescued from this building.

"People from outside of the town, people like them, had no idea what was going on before they moved in", Chen's mother, Kuo Yi-chien, explained as she waited in a hospital corridor outside the intensive-care unit where her daughter is.

Rescuers pulled a 20-year old man from the rubble more than a day after the natural disaster hit.

Lai said the rescue operation had started smoothly but ran into difficulties as emergency workers tried to get to residents in two apartment blocks that had been crushed beneath the other two neighbouring towers.

Yueh Chin-sen, whose mother-in-law's family of eight is still trapped, said the residents had complained of defects in the building.

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However, city officials have said it is too early to say for certain if poor construction was a factor in the collapse.

Men in camouflage, apparently military personnel, marched into one area of collapse carrying large shovels.

More than 1,200 rescuers, including those from the army, were deployed to look for survivors. Tainan's municipal government said it had mobilized almost 600 professional and volunteer firefighters. But Taipei was quiet, with no sense of emergency or obvious damage just before dawn.

China's government has offered assistance to Taiwan, a small island nation that Beijing considers a breakaway province, and expressed condolences for the victims, state-run media Xinhua reported.

Some are questioning whether the oil cans were used as shoddy filler material in the building's construction, and if this had a part to play in the building coming down in the quake.

Of the 28 killed, 26 were from the Wei Guan residential complex - the worst hit structure among the nine buildings collapsed after the quake, according to the Tainan city government.

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