Taiwan rocked by 400 aftershocks after deadly earthquake as hundreds still cut off

Hundreds of aftershocks have struck Taiwan’s eastern region, driving scores into shelters a day after the strongest earthquake in the last 25 years on the island killed at least 10 people and injured more than 1,000 others.

More than 400 aftershocks were recorded from Wednesday morning into Thursday night by the Central Weather Administration, with emergency services working frantically to evacuate civilians and workers in buildings.

It came as rescue efforts continued to try and save hundreds of people still stranded after rocks and mud blocked the roads leading to their hotels, campground or work site in the eastern Hualien area. Some 700 people remain cut off, the vast majority of them employees and guests at a hotel in the national park.

Authorities said they were safe and had food and water, and that work to repair the roads to the hotel was nearly finished. Another 10 workers from the same hotel were stranded elsewhere in the park, after most of the others in the group were rescued or managed to walk out.

Around 15 people could not be contacted and their condition is not known, authorities said, but numbers have fluctuated frequently as authorities have learned of more people in trouble and rescued others.

Some 200 residents of Hualien County near the epicentre were staying in temporary shelters when the aftershocks struck, and the main road linking the county to Taipei was still closed Thursday afternoon.

“The aftershocks were terrifying,” said Yu, a 52-year-old woman from Hualien, who gave only her family name. “It’s non-stop. I do not dare to sleep in the house.”

Outside the city, a helicopter ferried to safety six miners trapped on a cliff in a dramatic rescue after the quake cut off the roads into Hualien’s soaring mountains, in footage shown by the department. They said four foreigners remained unaccounted for – one Canadian, one Indian and two Australians.

The agriculture ministry urged people to keep away from the mountains because of the risk of falling rocks and the formation of “barrier lakes” as water pools behind unstable debris.

Rescue workers also located most of the roughly 50 hotel workers marooned on a highway as they headed to a resort in the Taroko National Park.

They also reached the same hotel in Taroko Gorge, cut off by the quake, by helicopter and established that all 400 people there were safe. The fire department said work to reopen the road would continue in the morning.

In the city, dozens of residents queued outside one badly damaged 10-storey building, waiting to go in and retrieve belongings.

Clad in helmets and accompanied by government personnel, each was given 10 minutes to collect valuables in huge garbage bags, though some saved time by throwing items out of windows into the street below.

“This building is no longer liveable,” said Tian Liang-si, who had a home on the fifth floor, as she scrambled to gather her laptop, family photographs and other crucial items.

She recalled the moment the quake struck, sending the building lurching and furniture sliding, while she rushed to save her four puppies.

Nearly 1,100 people were injured in the quake, which was the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years, measuring at magnitude 7.4 by the US Geological Survey.

Of the 10 dead, at least four were killed inside Taroko National Park, a tourist attraction famous for canyons and cliffs in mountainous Hualien about 90 miles from Taipei.

One person was found dead in a damaged building and another was found in the Ho Ren Quarry. Rescuers also carried out the body of a man, who had severe wounds on his head, from a hiking trail on Thursday.

Hualien was last struck by a deadly quake in 2018 which killed 17 people and brought down a historic hotel. Taiwan’s worst recent earthquake struck on 21 September 1999, a magnitude 7.7 temblor that caused 2,400 deaths, injured around 100,000 and destroyed thousands of buildings.