Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
RESCUE WORKERS SCRAMBLED to search for survivors in buildings left tilting precariously on their foundations in the Taiwanese city of Hualien today, after an overnight earthquake killed four and injured more than 200.
Authorities said they could not verify how many residents were still missing after the 6.4-magnitude quake which hit the popular tourist city late yesterday.
Rescue efforts were focused early today on the Yun Tsui residential building, which also housed a restaurant, shops and a hostel. The quake left the 12-storey building leaning to one side, its lower floors pancaked.
The national fire agency said 143 residents from the building remained unaccounted for but it was not immediately clear whether those missing were trapped inside the building or not.
One local who lives nearby told AFP how he watched the tower block partially collapse.
“I saw the first floor sink into the ground. Then it sunk and tilted further and the fourth floor became the first floor,” said Lu Chih-son, 35, who saw 20 people rescued from the building.
“My family were unhurt, but a neighbour was injured in their head and is bleeding. We dare not go back home now. There are many aftershocks and we are worried the house is damaged,” he told AFP.
Chen Chih-wei, 80, said he was sleeping in his apartment on the top floor of the building when the quake struck.
“My bed turned completely vertical, I was sleeping and suddenly I was standing,” he told AFP.
He said he managed to crawl his way to a balcony to wait for rescue, adding that the quake was the strongest he had felt in more than five decades of living in Hualien.
Cranes prop up building
President Tsai Ing-wen visited the site this morning, where officials were going room by room looking for anyone trapped inside.
“Now is the prime time for our rescue efforts, our first priority is to save people,” she said in a Facebook post.
Four mobile cranes had been brought in on the back of trucks to help prop up the structure, an AFP reporter on the scene said.
Liu Yan-hu, from the Hualien County Architects Association, told Apple Daily it looked like the building’s main structure was intact.
Five more buildings including a hospital and a hotel were also damaged in the city, where roads were ripped apart and strewn with rubble.
The national fire agency said four people had been killed across the city with 225 injured.
Hualien is one of Taiwan’s most popular tourist hubs as it lies on the picturesque east coast rail line and near to the popular Taroko Gorge.
Frequent aftershocks left some residents stranded in the open as they feared going back into buildings. Authorities said 830 people were in shelters this morning and some 1,900 houses were without power.
Officials also said 214 people had been injured in the quake, with 117 people rescued from damaged buildings so far.
The severely damaged Marshal Hotel had also crumpled into the ground as its bottom storeys disappeared.
“The lower floors sunk into the ground and I saw panicked tourists being rescued from the hotel,” eyewitness Blue Hsu told AFP.
Quake anniversary
The quake hit just before midnight (3.50pm Irish time) around 21 kilometres north-east of Hualien, according to the United States Geological Survey.
It followed almost 100 smaller tremors to have hit the area in the last three days and comes exactly two years since a quake of the same magnitude struck the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan, killing more than 100 people.
Most of the deaths from the February 2016 earthquake were from the 16-storey Wei-kuan apartment complex, which toppled on its side and buried many residents in the rubble.
It was the only high-rise in Tainan to crumble completely in the quake, which came two days before Lunar New Year, when many people were visiting relatives for the biggest celebration of the Chinese calendar.
The safety of the building was called into question immediately after the disaster, when metal cans and foam were found to have been used as fillers in the concrete and residents said there had been cracks in the structure.
Five people were found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment over the disaster, including the developer and two architects, with prosecutors saying they “cut corners” that affected the building’s structural integrity.
Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is regularly hit by earthquakes.
The island’s worst tremor in recent decades was a 7.6 magnitude quake in September 1999 that killed around 2,400 people.
Great. So let’s just accept no go areas.
@Alan McDonald: Nobody is stopping you walking through a park, with open gates after dark. if that’s what you want to do. As a woman, I most certainly wouldn’t because common sense dictates it’s not a safe thing to do.
@Ann Reddin: if there was public lighting in that park would you reconsider?
@Ann Reddin: Not disputing that. But let’s warn people while also working to make them safer and not just accept as no go areas.
@Alan McDonald: Its like going swimming in the Mediterranean at night with a pouch of sheep’s blood loosely sealed around your waist, common sense would dictate that’s not a good idea. We could police the seas and have divers on hand 24/7 to harpoon any predators, or we could ask you to refrain from being silly or else Darwin’s law comes into effect. There’s only a finite amount of resources that we have, sometimes you just have to let the lemming jump.
@Sean Fahey: that’s the most ridiculous analogy I think I’ve ever heard. Congratulations on stretching comparisons to breaking point
@Sean Fahey: Thry could also close the park could they not like what is done with most others?
What they are doing instead though is leaving the park open so people can make use of it, and telling them they shouldn’t because it’s dangerous.
@Sean Fahey: what are you smoking
@Ann Reddin: I.e. A no-go area for women. And you are happy to accept that?
@Alan McDonald: we’ve accepted that a long time ago, and not just after dark.
@Paul Whitehead: “And you are happy to accept that?”
What would you suggest Ann do about it?
@Sean Fahey: It really isn’t like that.
Antisocial behaviour has been allowed to fester for generations and is now just accepted as part of everyday life. It’s a sad indictment of successive governments failure to stamp it out with actual repercussions for peoples actions. People do what they want, when they want and to hell with everyone else’s quality of life.
@Bingobango: The reason politicians don’t take firm action on anti-social behaviour is that as we have seen in the recent election, all of the female candidates who most strongly advocated for abortion lost their seats. It seems if politicians become involved in unpleasant issues even when people agree with their views. Over time people forgot what the matter they agreed with them on was, but remember they were involved in something unpleasantness and didn’t vote for them.
@Pat Coyne: That’s not true at all.
Several lost their seats but I’d love to see your proof that it was because of the abortion ref, many of them were from constituencies that overwhelmingly voted to repeal. The fact is that several of them were just not fantastic TDs, despite some great work on the repeal campaign.
@Pat Coyne: I.e. A no-go area for women. And you are happy to accept that?
@Rob Hunt: My point is often those who express strong views come across as aggressive which makes them unpopular it was not particularly about abortion. It is difficult to address anti-social behaviour without coming across as a harsh person.
@Pat Coyne: Bit of a difference there between aborting babies and street lighting.
Just as I was leaving for work at 11:30pm two robbed cars in my local park. Definitely not safe shame really that people are afraid to walk around their local areas at night.
I agree with them – it just gives them a place for them to hang out under the lights. Plus the light pollution wastes energy and messes up the wildlife. We have birds singing all night in our overly lit estate.
Id rather see them light some of the main roads outside Dublin than the parks at night.
@Anthony Clark: Sure – then they should close the park at night if they don’t deem it safe.
@Gavin Conran: Many of the parks aren’t walled off. There’s a linear park in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown that stretches for 5km. Also do you expect them to gate and lock every small back alley and lane because there’s plenty of them you shouldn’t walk down if its dark and some even if its bright.
The Garda don’t bother policing these areas
They fail at gang shootings, drugs, house hold robbery, rape, domestic violence…..
Big focus on driving offences though.
They’ve got limited resources but I feel that if you start on the basics like safe streets, the other while start to fall into place
@Davis Payne: Thankfully the regular articles on here and other media shows your comment is opinion and not fact.
@Davis Payne: Gardai always go for easy targets.
@Paul: gang related shootings are definitely up.
Regular articles state that.
The rape crisis centre states most rapes are not even reported.
Garda Chief Superintendent Christy Mangan says Ireland has massive issue with cocaine.
Doesn’t sound like success to me, that’s my opinion.
In other countries parks are lit up. It would be great to be able to use them at night. There’s some amazing parks in our city that could be brilliant amenities. The issue is that they’re needs to be better policing of these areas. As it is even in day time there’s a lot of anti social behaviour.
@Keith Michael Gregg: light pollution is not a good thing either.
@Chewey Bacca: lights could be turned off at 10/11 pm. People get an evening walk in and doesn’t disturb wildlife too much
St Anne’s is great in the dark. Bats foxes and badgers. Plenty to see
@Stephen Brady:
And that’s just the locals
@Stephen Brady: it would be bad for the animals then if the parks were lit up like a football stadium.
@Diogenes: So we don’t light them up like a football stadium
@Stephen Brady: exactly the reason why I go to the park at night
@Diogenes: yeah but people could feel a bit safer if the animals try attack or assault them…. they are getting off Scott free by the justice system with strings of convictions…
@Diogenes: agree. We bring our dog to walk in killiney hill park in the evening and they have no lighting so we just bring a torch
@Diogenes: That’s a bit harsh calling the anti-social kids animals lol
Our legal system is a failure and needs replacement. Maybe then it will be able to process this anti social behaviour. Gardai can’t win if the court let’s them walk
Well if you can’t enter a public park after dark because of safety well that really says it all for the past and forward thinking of the relevant councils and Garda authorities, makes me kind of not like this country
@Mickomacko: well said Mick
More or less victim blaming at its finest
@Minamino: OK.
Go on off so and enter the park at 2am and see how you get on. Then, you’ll likely be an actual victim.
The world is not perfect. The idiocy of thinking that it should be makes you a victim of unrealistic expectations. Unrealistic expectations are a primary driver of idioicy, which is the opposite of common sense. Common sense is what seperates us from many other species on the planet. There is no ”victim blaming” in accepting reality or speaking it.
I actually thought there was gonna be a poll at the end of this article, sorta disappointed that there wasn’t.
@Ronan Walsh: ah sure.. Does any sf supporters think? Oh wait.. Opps
Ironically, common sense is fairly uncommon
Yes n bring the family for a picnic…
@Anthony Christoper Mc Garth: lol
Bring the Rottweiler with you and nobody will bother you.
Being in dubai you can leave your phone ,wallet on the table anywhere and be still there after when you come back from the toilets a lot to be said for proper law and order
Why do you want to be walking through there anyway after dark?
Sometimes you don’t have a choice because the park lies between you and home. Tolka Valley Park is an example of this. Very minimal lighting.
It’s a shame the powers that be and certain people forced the gates to be chained open in Oscar square park.
They clearly don’t care dogs run out into oncoming traffic but yet it’s so short sighted given that a child could too.
Absolutely no need for gates to be chained open.
Media gets every thing wrong these days big blow of smoke and the a fire haha come on if the gate is left open with no locks let the people go in if they want to go in its up to ourselfs if we do
Yes, there wouldn’t be any issue most of the time.
The green party want light pollution and birds who are going to die because there will be no night for them to roost.
Put in very expensive lights and then spend another fortune repairing them after they are vandalised.
I find the comments here remarkable. Yes walking in a park after dark has its risks… Our papers every year present a story of some sort involving an incident in a park at night. They also present just as many incidents happening during the day. Initially reading the article I agreed that you shouldn’t and called to mind my parents telling me not to walk through my local park at home but instead take the main road even though it was longer purely because it was lit.
Their are a number of points. Firstly walking through a lit park at night or not is no more or less safe then walking anywhere else at night, lit or not or even in broad daylight. Lighting a park or any darkened area gives a sense of security because you can see. Seeing is one of our senses, when one of our senses is interrupted our instinct is to flee. Our instinct to flee varies from person to person, which is why some here “would never walk in a dark park” and others would out of necessity and others love it. This is part of our natural conditioning built through evolution over millennia.
Secondly if parks are known for anti social behavior I can guarantee not all this behavior is at night. So our own perception of a park we know to be anti social during the day is exasperated by us when we perceive the park at nighttime. We think “their upto all sorts.”
Thirdly, some of comments on here are laughable as well as the scare mongers telling you to be 6ft 3 and built. I know some of those guys and their wimps useless with a paper bag let alone a night time bust up in a dark park. Why? Because fighting someone or defending yourself is mind over matter. Meaning that you can have muscles to beat the band to defend yourself but if you don’t have it in your conscious to harm another you won’t. Again like fleeing our fight response varies from person to person too, also depending on the situation. Being big gives the illusion of strength it doesn’t make you strong. And is frankly insulting to those people who are big but get bullied everyday.
Lastly, avoiding parks at night won’t solve the problem, it’ll make it grow and attract more anti social behavior. Contrary to all the nay sayers the only way to remove anti social behavior in a park is for to use it, day or night, police it day or night and in doing so you prevent the problem from continuing.
The only reason our parks are being used in this way at night is because their not being used, not being policied and the “anti socials” know this.
People on here should really watch their language and while you all are entitled to your opinion, your are not entitled to your own facts.
I don’t know what planet people are on if they expect to go into vast dark parks at night and expect guards on every corner and lighting everywhere to keep them safe. Human beings are also animals and do crazy sh*t and some are highly motivated to harm others. The law can’t possibly cover every situation. As a woman who grew up on the Northside maybe I accept the world as it is, not as it “should be”. Jaysus wept, don’t go walking in parks at night and if you do, be 6ft3 and built like a machine ;)
Wouldn’t stop me going in after dark if the gates are open
Scare mungering.. Here we go again…. Dublin City Council using this tactic for rezoning land to build cheap crap homes
Imagine being in charge of running a city and seeing absolutely nothing wrong with telling people not only that the public amenities you oversee are too dangerous to use, but that the fact that they’re dangerous is too obvious even to mention.
Vigilantes? If weRe allowed to beat up asbo teenagers then it’ll be safe enough.
Sundrive Park is open 24 /7 -yet city council.erected a sign last year with Closing Times for each month of the year !erected at tax payers expense yet the gates are not locked at night -does not make sense. I saw people from my window walking thru park at 5am recently with torches -we afraid houses be broken into !
I want my park back. As we were kids growing up we had great fun in Oscar square little park. Now it’s chained up .some dead brain turned it into a dog meeting place. I would love to sit there on the steps with my kids and tell them my little stories when i was a child. Terry burns 0873187831. Maybe mr coffee will read this. Terry
Wouldn’t enter a park in daylight. Some of them should be used for much needed housing. For nine months of the year, the pitches are waterlogged.
Hire Robocop!
This was a no go 40 years ago so why the surprise. Why is it news.
have your say