ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

More than 400 die in Taiwan quake

More than 400 people were killed as a giant earthquake rocked Taiwan late last night, and officials feared the toll could rise dramatically since at least 1,000 were trapped in collapsed buildings.

State television reported 402 dead, and more than 2,100 people trapped or injured. A wine factory in central Taiwan, where the earthquake was centred, exploded and a 12-storey concrete apartment and hotel complex in downtown Taipei collapsed like a concertina, trapping more than 100 people.

''The death toll continues to rise and we continue to discover more people being trapped in the collapsed buildings,'' a spokesman at the government's disaster centre said over the phone.

''It is still very difficult to estimate the extent of the damage,'' the spokesman said.

The earthquake measured 7.6 on the open-ended Richter Scale, the United States Geological Survey said. Taiwan's weather bureau recorded the intensity at 7.3 and said the earthquake was believed to be the strongest ever to hit Taiwan.

The earthquake in Turkey last month which killed more than 15,000 people measured 7.3 on the Scale.

Most of Taiwan was asleep when the earthquake struck at 1.47 AM (17.47 GMT, Monday), with its epicentre 12.5 kilometres (7.8 miles) west of Taiwan's central county of Nantou, a seismically active area.

More than 200 aftershocks -- some with an intensity of 4.5 on the Richter Scale -- were recorded, and the tremors cut off electricity in most parts of the island.

President Lee Teng-Hui urged people to stay calm and reassured the public that the government had mobilised all its resources to handle the disaster. The stock and currency markets were ordered to close today.

''I was asleep and the ceiling suddenly fell from the sky,'' said 27-year-old Lin Hung-Yi. ''I ran out after the quake, but my mother is still trapped inside,'' said high-school student Chiang Hung-Han in tears.

Stuart Koyanagi of the US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, told CNN that a tsunami or tidal wave warning had been issued by the Taiwan authorities.

''This is similar to the quake in Turkey. But we still don't know how deep below the surface the earthquake was,'' he said.

''We estimate this is a major earthquake. We only record five to ten such quakes a year. Quakes like this can kill dozens of people and collapse a lot of buildings,'' he added.

Tell us what you think of this report