A baby boy is rescued from a collapsed building Photo: AP/Wally Santana
Structure of complex destroyed by 6.4 magnitude earthquake
Rescuers pulled babies alive from rubble after a powerful earthquake in Taiwan felled a 16-storey apartment complex full of families who had gathered for Chinese New Year
celebrations.
The 6.5 magnitude quake hit 30 miles from the western coastal city of Tainan just before 4am. local time, when most people were asleep.
Local authorities feared that the earthquake’s shallow depth at 14 miles meant that the impact was more severe forcing several buildings in Tainan city to bend at alarming angles and others to collapse.
Much of the rescue effort was centred on this toppled 17-storey apartment block, where at least 11 were killed and 100 remained missing last night. The building included a care centre for newborns and mothers, and a baby was among the dead.
A 16-year-old teenage girl surnamed Zheng was living on the 12th floor in the collapsed 17-storey building and had called an emergency hotline several times to say she was trapped under a wall along with her sister and parents.
Rescuers found her two sisters hours later, but her parents were still missing.
Another resident said he took a ladder and tools to pry open some window bars to rescue a woman crying for help. She then asked him to go back and save her husband and child.
“I was afraid of a gas explosion so I didn’t go in. At the time there were more people calling for help, but my ladder wasn't long enough so there was no way to save them," he said.
Rescue vehicles drove through red and yellow paper lanterns suspended outside the building, as part of the decorations to celebrating the Lunar New Year - which marks the most important family holiday in the Chinese calendar.
Officials say some 200 people live in the building but there could be more families gathered inside ahead of the holiday.
Taiwan mobilised its army to join the rescue effort.
Earlier in the day, an elderly woman, wrapped in blankets, was strapped to a board and slowly slid down a ramp to the ground as the cries of those still trapped rang out. Rescuers used dogs and acoustic equipment to pick up signs of life in the rubble.
Rescuers clad in red and yellow overalls pulled over 240 survivors from the ruins and later inserted huge supports under slabs of leaning concrete to buttress the ruins as they searched for more.
Because of the spectacular fall of the residential high-rise, questions surfaced about whether the 1989 structure had shoddy construction.
Tainan's government said the Wei Guan building was not listed as a dangerous structure before the quake, and Taiwan's interior minister, Chen Wei-zen, said an investigation would examine whether the developer had cut corners during construction.
Gas and water supplies in the city of two million people were affected. Around 400,000 were left without water, authorities said, and more than 2,000 homes without electricity.
Taiwan lies near the intersection of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
However, seismology director at Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau Kuo Kai-wen said the quake was equivalent to the energy release of two atom bombs.
The tremors were felt as far as Hong Kong and on mainland China’s Fujian province, delaying some local trains as workers check for damages.
China is offering help to Taiwan in the wake of the deadly earthquake.
It adds that China has also offered rescue assistance to Taiwan, which the Beijing leadership regards as a breakaway province it will eventually unify with.
The Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou cancelled his new year plans to arrive at the emergency response centre set up in Tainan city.
Earthquakes frequently rattle Taiwan, but most are minor and cause little or no damage. However, a magnitude-7.6 quake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.
Children await news on missing parents
A 16-year-old teenage girl surnamed Zheng was living on the 12th floor in the collapsed 17-storey building and had called an emergency hotline several times to say she was trapped under a wall along with her sister and parents.
Rescuers found her two sisters hours later, but her parents were still missing.
Another resident said he took a ladder and tools to pry open some window bars to rescue a woman crying for help. She then asked him to go back and save her husband and child.
“I was afraid of a gas explosion so I didn’t go in. At the time there were more people calling for help, but my ladder wasn't long enough so there was no way to save them," he said.
The focus of the rescue effort is on a 16-storey apartment complex which is full of families who had gathered for Chinese New Year, with at least seven dead and more than 30 feared trapped.
The entire residential complex of four buildings containing almost 100 homes toppled, left on its side with twisted metal girders exposed and clouds of dust rising from the jumbled concrete.
Among the seven dead was a 10-day old baby girl, the National Fire Agency said - she was one of five people who were killed when the apartment complex collapsed.
The other two victims were killed in different parts of the city by falling debris, the agency said.
Dozens still trapped after 17-storey building collapses
A powerful earthquake struck Taiwan on Saturday killing at least seven people, most in a 17-storey apartment building that collapsed, with about 35 people still feared trapped there hours into a rescue operation.
As a search for survivors in the rubble went on, questions were being raised about the construction of the Wei-guan Golden Dragon Building, with its floors that pancaked down on each other when the 6.4 magnitude tremor hit at around 4 a.m. (2000 GMT), at the start of a Lunar New Year holiday.
Five of the dead, including a 10-day-old girl, were from the apartment building in the southern city of Tainan.
Rescuers mounted hydraulic ladders and a crane to scour the ruins, plucking more than 220 survivors to safety, with dozens taken to hospital, a fire brigade official said.
Buildings in nine other locations in the city of 2 million people had collapsed and five were left tilting at alarming angles, a government emergency centre said.
But a fire department official said rescue efforts were focused on the apartment block, where a child's clothes fluttered from a first-floor laundry line and the smell of leaking gas hung in the air.
"I was watching TV and after a sudden burst of shaking, I heard a boom. I opened my metal door and saw the building opposite fall down," said a 71-year-old neighbour who gave his name as Chang.
A plumber, he said he fetched some tools and a ladder and prised some window bars open to rescue a woman crying for help.
"She asked me to go back and rescue her husband, child, but I was afraid of a gas explosion so I didn't go in. At the time there were more people calling for help, but my ladder wasn't long enough so there was no way to save them."
The quake was centred 27 miles southeast of Tainan, at a depth of14 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
An elderly woman, wrapped in blankets, was strapped to a board and slowly slid down a ramp to the ground as the cries of those still trapped rang out. Rescuers used dogs and acoustic equipment to pick up signs of life in the rubble.
Authorities said there were 96 units and 256 people living in the collapsed apartment building, but they did not know how many were actually there when the quake struck.
The fire department said 115 people had been taken to hospital from around Tainan.
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