The first quake was alarming enough – a rumble louder than anything felt in Taiwan for a quarter of a century that lasted more than a minute on Wednesday morning, knocking existing and even entire buildings sideways. It was so powerful that it prompted tsunami warnings in Japan, China and the Philippines.
But then, even in a fault-ridden place with long and hard experience with earthquakes, the aftershock after the aftershock was amazing, continuing every few minutes throughout the day.
The 7.4-magnitude quake killed nine and injured more than 900 others, expanding a special earthquake response system that has served as a model elsewhere. More than 50 people remained trapped Wednesday afternoon. Forty flights were canceled or delayed. About 15,000 households were without water and 5,000 households were without electricity.
Tsai Kuang-Hui, a retired teacher in Hualien, on the island’s east coast, near the epicenter, said residents were choosing to stay out. “I’m trying to fix a broken water pipe. There are a lot of water and gas pipes that have broken,” he said by phone.
Many residents were at home getting ready for work and school when the earthquake struck. Others were driving on highways or had already set out for early hikes in Taiwan’s national parks ahead of a four-day vacation. After the main earthquake stopped, people across the island took to the streets to assess damaged buildings and quickly send reassurances to friends and family members and photos of broken objects.
But almost immediately, people felt the stomach churning of an aftershock. Taiwan is prone to earthquakes and small tremors are common, but these continued every few minutes during the day. By 3 p.m., 101 aftershocks had occurred, with at least one temblor measuring 6.5 and many over 5.
Officials said more aftershocks were likely in the next four days and warned residents to avoid visiting ancestral tombs, especially in the mountains, this weekend during a holiday known as Ching Ming to honor them. . The forecast called for rain, which could make driving conditions more difficult on damaged roads.
Although the quake will reverberate for a long time because it was so large, more than 100 aftershocks were not unheard of for an earthquake of this size, said Yi-Ying Wen, an earthquake expert at National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan. “We should expect the size of the aftershocks to slowly become smaller and smaller over the next two weeks.”
The worst damage occurred in Hualien County, a lush, scenic area prone to earthquakes.
In Hualien City, the county seat, rescuers focused on a brick building with glass windows called the Sky Building, which had partially collapsed and was leaning heavily to one side. The residents got out of the windows and went down stairs, with the help of rescuers.
The fire department said one person inside the building died, while about two dozen others were evacuated. Search efforts continued, but it was not immediately clear how many people were trapped in the building.
Peggy Jiang, who runs The Good Kid, a children’s bookstore down the street from the partially damaged Uranus building, said it was a good thing the store hadn’t opened yet when the quake hit. “Most people in Hualien are used to earthquakes,” he said. “But that was particularly scary, a lot of people ran into the street right after.”
Rescuers also freed dozens of people trapped in other parts of the county. Three hikers were killed by falling rocks on a trail in Taroko National Park, a popular site famous for a canyon that cuts through mountains that rise steeply from the coast.
The county government opened evacuation areas where people could take shelter, including high school gymnasiums and sports fields, as aftershocks continued to roll through the area.
Derik du Plessis, a 44-year-old South African who has lived in Hualien for 17 years, described chaos and panic on the streets after the quake, as people rushed to pick up their children and check their homes.
Roads were blocked, he said, and walls had collapsed onto cars. “Right now people seem to have calmed down, but a lot of people are sitting on the street,” he said. “They don’t want to go into the buildings because there are still a lot of vibrations.”
Lin Yong, 36, who runs a store that sells sports shoes in Hualien, said he was at home preparing to take his 16-month-old baby to a medical appointment when the quake struck. At first it felt like a series of small tremors, he said, and then “suddenly it turned into a strong earthquake shaking up and down.” The glass cover of a ceiling light fell and broke. “All I could do was protect my baby,” she said.
The earthquake also shook the west coast of the island, completely toppling a building in Changhua County. Many train services were halted as authorities inspected the tracks for damage.
The quake struck during the morning commute just before 8 a.m. at a depth of 22 miles, according to the US Geological Survey.
Taiwan is located at the intersection of the Philippine Sea tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate, making it vulnerable to seismic activity. Hualien sits on several active faults and 17 people died in an earthquake there in 2018.
The quake hit Taiwan as many people here were preparing to travel for Grave Cleaning Day on Thursday, when, across the Chinese-speaking world, people mourn the dead and make offerings at their graves. The holiday weekend would normally see a surge in travel as people visit family in Taiwan.
Authorities are working to restore train services in Hualien and two-way traffic on the area’s highways, Wang Guo-cai, the island’s transportation minister, told a news conference.
TSMC, the world’s largest maker of advanced semiconductors, briefly evacuated workers from its factories but said a few hours later that they were returning to work. The company said its security systems were working normally and that it was still assessing the impact. TSMC’s fabs are clustered along Taiwan’s west coast, far from the epicenter of the quake.
All staff were safe, the company said. However, chip production is very expensive and even short downtimes can cost millions of dollars.
That quake, which struck about 90 miles south-southwest of Taipei, was the second deadliest in the island’s history, according to the USGS and the Central Weather Service. More than 10,000 people were injured and more than 100,000 homes were destroyed or damaged.
In the years since, authorities have set up an urban search and rescue team and opened several emergency medical centers, among other measures. And in 2018, after an earthquake in the eastern coastal city of Hualien killed 17 people and caused several buildings to partially collapse, the government ordered a wave of building inspections.
Taiwan has also been improving its earthquake early warning system since the 1980s. And two years ago, it rolled out new building codes that, among other things, require owners of vulnerable buildings to install ad hoc structural reinforcements.
Paul Mozur contributed to the report.
