TAINAN, Taiwan (AP) —
Rescuers were searching late Saturday for more than 100 people still
missing after a powerful, shallow earthquake struck southern Taiwan
before dawn, causing a high-rise residential building to collapse and
killing at least 14 people.
The spectacular fall of the building immediately raised questions about its construction, and Taiwan's interior minister said there would be an investigation.
Local
authorities said Saturday night that more than 100 people remained
missing and that rescuers were racing to find them. Taiwan's official
Central News Agency reported that 172 people were missing.
Rescuer
Jian Zhengshun said the rescue work was difficult because part of the
high-rise building was believed to be buried underground, with the quake
loosening the earth. He said rescuers had to clear rubble for passages
to reach people who were trapped.Hundreds of people were injured in the quake, but most of them had been released from hospitals by Saturday night.
The quake came two days
before the start of Lunar New Year celebrations that mark the most
important family holiday in the Chinese calendar. The collapsed building
had 256 registered residents, but far more people could have been
inside when it fell because the population might have swelled ahead of
the holiday, when families typically host guests.
Local
media said the building included a care center for newborns and
mothers, and a newborn was among those confirmed dead in the disaster.
Most
people were asleep when the magnitude-6.4 earthquake hit at about 4
a.m., 22 miles (35 kilometers) southeast of Yujing. It struck only 6
miles (10 kilometers) underground, according to the U.S. Geological
Survey. Shallow earthquakes generally cause more damage than deeper
ones.
Tainan resident Lin Bao-gui, a secondhand car salesman whose
cars were smashed when the building collapsed across the street from
him, said his house first started "shaking horizontally, then up and
down, then a big shake right to left.""I stayed in my bed but jumped up when I heard a big bang, which was the sound of the building falling," he said.
Authorities in Tainan said that of the 14 people killed in the quake, 11 were found at the ruins of the fallen building.
Rescuers found the bodies of a 10-day-old infant, three other children and six adults at the collapsed building, Taiwan's emergency management information center said. One other death was reported at the site, but details were not immediately available.
Authorities said two people were killed by falling objects elsewhere in Tainan. No details were available on the 14th death, reported Saturday night.
Rescuers
pulled out at least 247 survivors from the collapsed building, the
emergency management information center said. Throughout Tainan, 334
people were rescued, the city government said.
The information center said 477 people were injured, with 380 of them discharged from hospitals by Saturday evening.The Taiwanese news website ET Today reported that a mother and daughter were among the survivors from the building, and that the girl drank her urine while waiting to be rescued, which happened sooner than expected.
Rescuers went apartment to apartment, drawing red circles near windows of apartments they already had searched.
"I
went to the top floors of the middle part of the building, where we
found five people, one of whom was in bed and already dead," said Liu
Wen-bin, a rescuer from Taichung. "Some people were found in the shower,
some in the bedroom."
Elsewhere
in Tainan, dozens of other people were rescued or safely evacuated from
damaged structures or buildings declared unsafe following the quake,
including a market and a seven-floor building, authorities said. A bank
building also careened, but no one was injured or trapped.
All told, nine buildings collapsed and five careened in Tainan, the emergency management information center said.
As dawn broke, Taiwanese
TV showed survivors being brought gingerly from the high-rise, including
an elderly woman in a neck brace and others wrapped in blankets. The
trappings of daily life — a partially crushed air conditioner, pieces of
a metal balcony, windows — lay twisted in rubble.
People
with their arms around firefighters were being helped from the
building, and cranes were being used to search darkened parts of the
structure for survivors.
Men in camouflage, apparently military personnel, marched into one area of collapse carrying large shovels.
The
emergency management information center said 1,236 rescuers from
outside Tainan were deployed, including 840 from the army, along with
six helicopters and 23 rescue dogs.
Tainan's municipal government said it mobilized nearly 600 professional and volunteer firefighters.
The quake was felt as a lengthy, rolling shake in the capital,
Taipei, on the other side of the island. But Taipei was quiet, with no
sense of emergency or obvious damage just before dawn.
Residents in mainland China also reported that the tremor was felt there. The Beijing government offered to help as needed.
Because
of the collapse of the residential high-rise, questions surfaced about
whether the 1989 structure had shoddy construction. Tainan's government
said the 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.
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.