The government said two bridges in the city were either cracked or could not be used due to the quake."It's
the biggest quake I've experienced in Hualien in more than 10 years,"
resident Blue Hsu told AFP, who said his home shook violently.Describing the scene at the Marshal Hotel, Hsu said the bottom storeys had been crushed."The
lower floors sunk into the ground and I saw panicked tourists being
rescued from the hotel. There is one bulldozer and about 50 rescuers on
the scene," he said.
Hualien is one of Taiwan's most
popular tourist hubs as it lies on the picturesque east coast rail line
and is near to popular Taroko Gorge.Facebook user
Sun Chen-hsiang, who was livestreaming the scene at the hotel from a
distance, told how the building next to his home had collapsed."All the people watching this livestream, please get yourself to a safe place and don't stay home," he said.
Another resident told AFP how an apartment block near his flat had also partially collapsed.
"I
saw the first floor sink into the ground. Then it sunk and tilted
further and the fourth floor became the first floor," said Lu Chih-son,
35, adding he saw 20 people rescued from the building.
"My
family were unhurt, but a neighbour was injured in the head and is
bleeding. We dare not go back home now. There are many aftershocks and
we are worried the house is damaged."
There had been at least 15 aftershocks following the quake, Taiwan's weather bureau said.
QUAKE ANNIVERSARY
Officials from Hualien fire department said 149 people had been rescued from damaged buildings.
Fire officials said up to 16 people remained trapped in a residential building.Rescuers
from around the island were preparing to help, Taiwan's president Tsai
Ing-wen said on her Facebook page, promising rapid disaster relief.The quake hit at 23.50pm around 21km northeast of Hualien, according to the United States Geological Survey.
It follows almost 100 smaller tremors to
have hit the area in the last three days and comes exactly two years
since a quake of the same magnitude struck the southern Taiwanese city
of Tainan, killing more than 100 people.
Most of the
death toll from the February 2016 earthquake was from the 16-storey
Wei-kuan apartment complex, which toppled on its side with many of its
residents buried in the rubble.
It was the only high-rise
in Tainan to crumble completely in the quake, which came two days
before Lunar New Year, when many people would have been visiting
relatives for the biggest celebration of the Chinese calendar.
The
safety of the building was called into question immediately after the
disaster, when metal cans and foam were found to have been used as
fillers in the concrete and residents said there had been cracks in the
structure.
Five people were charged over the disaster,
including the developer and two architects, with prosecutors saying they
"cut corners" that affected the building's structural integrity.
Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
The island's worst tremor in recent decades was a 7.6 magnitude quake in September 1999 that killed around 2,400 people.