Huge Quake in Taiwan Kills More Than 1,100

By HENRY CHU

Sept. 21, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BEIJING — A massive earthquake rocked the island of Taiwan early today, killing at least 1,100 people, injuring more than 3,400 and trapping hundreds more in buildings that toppled or collapsed like sandcastles.

Initial reports estimated that the quake had a magnitude as great as 7.6, which would make it among the most devastating temblors in the island’s recorded history. The quake’s severity was on a par with the one that struck Turkey on Aug. 17, killing at least 16,000.

Television footage from Taiwan showed rescue workers clawing at rubble to get to people buried within. Dazed residents, some clad in only their underwear or pajamas, wandered about the darkened streets, their bodies covered with cuts, bruises and trickles of blood.

Firefighters rushed to put out blazes that cropped up across Taiwan, including in the capital, Taipei. Electricity was knocked out throughout most of the island, home to 22 million people.

The quake struck the sleeping island at 1:47 a.m. and was centered in the mountainous county of Nantou, about 90 miles south-southwest of Taipei.

About 150 of those killed appeared to be in Nantou itself, a remote area in central Taiwan cut off from communication with the rest of the island after the temblor. Nearly 200 people were reported dead in the nearby city of Taichung, where apartment blocks of several stories collapsed on themselves. Ruptured pipes sent water flooding into streets.

Damage radiated out from the epicenter. In densely packed Taipei, rescue workers dug frantically through the debris of a hotel that had pancaked onto its lower floors.

“Hurry, go rescue people. They’re in there--they’re inside,” one woman urged disaster crews. “I lived on the ninth floor, but now it’s the fourth floor.”

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, who is in Taiwan on a trade mission, was jolted awake by what started as “a gentle swaying” but grew into a violent shaking that nearly threw him from his bed in the Grand Hyatt Regency hotel in Taipei.

“We’ve been through quite an experience,” Kempthorne told Associated Press. “I think many of us thought we might be done for.”

In Washington, President Clinton offered condolences and support.

“We are in touch directly with the Taiwan authorities to determine what assistance from the United States may be needed,” he said.

A 70-person rescue team from Fairfax, Va., just returned from lending assistance in Turkey, was preparing to leave for Taiwan early today.

The quake was the third major temblor to strike a heavily populated area within the past month, after quakes in Turkey and Greece.

Taiwan, a seismically unstable area like Japan, has a long history of earthquakes, but most are centered out to the east, in the Pacific Ocean, and are felt only as minor tremors onshore. The last devastating hit of such high magnitude was a quake measuring 7.1 that wrenched the island in 1935, killing more than 3,200 people.

In July of last year, a 6.2 earthquake rocked southern Taiwan and caused at least five deaths. In 1992, a 5.6 quake in the northern half of the island caused landslides but little damage. In 1986, a temblor of 7.8 was recorded, but it left only 15 people dead.

Unconfirmed reports said today’s temblor began only a mile below ground, making the motion more violent than usual on the surface. The quake was even felt across the Taiwan Strait on the Chinese mainland, in the southern provinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian, the New China News Agency reported.

“We only record five to 10 such quakes [of such magnitude] a year,” an official with the U.S. Geological Survey in Colorado told CNN.

Authorities issued a tsunami warning, but the danger that the quake would trigger an enormous ocean wave receded as the morning wore on.

Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui appealed for calm, assuring his people that help was on its way.

“The emergency services will try their best to secure the situation as soon as possible,” Lee said.

But continued aftershocks, some as strong as 6.8, kept the Taiwanese on edge, with many too afraid to go back into their homes.

Throughout the morning, images beamed from the island showed damaged buildings, their inhabitants evincing a mixture of fear, shock and grim determination as they tried to locate loved ones trapped inside. Some survivors cried out for help in finding missing relatives; others, despairing, buried their heads in their hands.

When it finally came, dawn shed light on both the extent of the damage and the frantic work of rescue crews, who were seen on television pulling people to safety out of the rubble of some destroyed buildings hours after the quake.

But information remained sketchy throughout the morning. An explosion was reported to have ripped through a rice wine distillery in the town of Puli, not far from the quake’s epicenter. But no figures on possible deaths or injuries were available.

On the outskirts of Taipei, a 12-story apartment building tipped over onto a shorter adjacent building.

“I was in the middle of sleeping, and the ceiling suddenly fell from the sky,” apartment building resident Lin Hung-yi, 27, told Reuters news agency.

Taiwan’s stock and currency markets, usually a hive of activity, were ordered closed today.

The quake came on top of an already tense summer on the island. Since July, Taipei has been locked in a rancorous war of words with Beijing after Lee described relations between the two rivals as “state to state,” junking the “one China” formula that governed their ties for years.

In Beijing, which considers Taiwan a rebel province and calls its inhabitants “compatriots,” President Jiang Zemin expressed concern today for the quake victims and offered assistance to the island.

“We express our utmost concern over this major disaster,” the New China News Agency quoted Jiang as saying.