A magnitude 6.4 earthquake has hit the South Taiwanese city of Tainan before 20:00 GMT Friday. It has toppled buildings and killed at least 11 people while 30 remain missing. 5 aftershocks were also felt after and the quake was also felt on the capital city of Taipei which was 300km away. The damage of the quake wasn't widespread but it left a lot of buildings leaning dangerously. Beijing, China has already offered assistance but they say it's still early to tell whether the Taiwan needs assistance from outside. Here's a detailed report on the deadly earthquake by BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35508475
More information on the Taiwan earthquake: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20004y6h#general_region The USGS is a good resource for worldwide information on earthquakes and other hazards. In addition to official social media resources, one can subscribe to various email notification services, including earthquake and volcano. The full list is a bit difficult to find on the web site, but a search lists all email notification services currently available. I have subscribed to the ENS for almost two decades. Last week we felt three rumble and booms in the space of four minutes. One picture fell off a wall. The noise didn't scare the birds on the backyard feeders or attract the attention of 11 whitetail deer browsing in the back yard. Within 5-10 minutes the USGS pinpointed the source as sonic booms centered 17 miles south of us. It took the news media another 2 hours to figure out it was a pair of F-35 jets breaking the sound barrier.
This is terrible news. What's worse is that an infant was one of the casualties. It is a truly devastating incident. I read that in some parts of Taiwan, there is still no electricity. Having experienced no electricity during typhoons, I know the feeling too well. I hope they can recover from this tragedy and be able to move on from their lives. Our prayers are with you.
Check out the in-country English language China Post and the Taipei Times newspapers for complete coverage. As I write this at 2330 UTC Saturday the China Post home page has 6 related stories; the Taipei Times has 1 story. HTH. YMMV.
The images of the ruins are just so heartbreaking to see. I remember the strong earthquake that struck our area when I was still a kid, the ruins were also major and more than a thousand people died during that quake. It just breaks my heart to see images of earthquake disasters because I can relate well to the feeling of having to experience such a strong magnitude.
I heard this when it happened, but haven't heard a lot of news and reports since then... I should check up on how things are going there. Any of our bullmarketboard members from Taiwan? If so, I hope you're safe, and will check in!
It is horrible that things like that happen in an area as crowded as Taiwan. I think that was about the magnitude of the East Coast quake that was centered in this county. No injuries happened here..but there was a great deal of property damage. The aftershocks were extremely scary.
This is terrible to hear on the news. I hope the Taiwanese people are getting back on their feet now I heard a lot of NGOs are helping as well. I saw on CNN that one building fell because their materials were made of substandard quality which just adds to desperate and broken feeling we're all having now. I blame the contractors for that building because others that were earthquake-proof didn't topple like this one did.
I hope and pray they rescuers will continue to find the missing alive. The patterm of building failures seems rather hapahazard, much like what was seen in Christchurch. Some buildings do not even have cracked glass, standing right next to others that failed catastrophically. I think there are still lessons to be learned about buidling design and closely monitored building standards.