- Earthquake kills nine, more than 900 injured
- Fifty on minibuses heading to national park missing
- Epicentre just off Taiwan’s sparsely populated east coast
- Workers return to semiconductor giant TSMC facilities
Video showed rescuers using ladders to help trapped people out of windows. Strong tremors in Taipei forced the subway system to close briefly, although most lines resumed service.
Fire authorities said they had already evacuated some 70 people trapped in tunnels near Hualien city, including two Germans.
But they had lost contact with 50 workers aboard four minibuses heading to a hotel in a national park, Taroko Gorge, they said, and rescuers were looking for them. Another 80 people are trapped in a mining area, though it was not immediately clear if they were inside a mine.
On a highway through the mountains, huge boulders from a landslide were strewn across the road. The Fire Bureau of Taichung City Government said it rescued a man in his 50s who was unconscious in a truck.
FIGHTER JETS
A woman who runs bed-and-breakfast accommodation in Hualien city said she scrambled to calm her guests who were scared by the quake.
“This is the biggest earthquake I have ever experienced,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her family name, Chan.
The government put the number of injured at 946.
