Over 100 missing, 18 dead as strong quake rattles Taiwan

The total is much higher than authorities had first estimated when rescuers began combing the wreckage of the 17-storey building in the southern city of Tainan with sniffer dogs and acoustic equipment, looking for signs of life.

Taiwan is prone to quakes because it’s near the convergence of two of Earth’s tectonic plates – the Philippine Sea Plate and Eurasia Plate.

President Ma Ying-jeou visted a hospital and the emergency response center in Tainan before rushing back to the capital, Taipei, to attend a briefing on the situation.

China has offered assistance to Taiwan following a 6.4-magnitude quake that killed at least three people and injured more than 150 in the south of the self-ruled island.

Aerial views of the collapsed building showed cranes and ladders around the toppled structure. “My 11- and 12-year-old grandsons are still inside on the ninth floor”, said the man, who only gave his surname, Huang.

Most people were caught asleep when the magnitude-6.4 natural disaster occurred at about 4 a.m., 22 miles (35 kilometers) southeast of Yujing.

According to China’s office handling relations with Taiwan, mainland officials have been in touch with their Taiwanese counterparts since shortly after the quake hit the southern city of Tainan. No details were immediately available for the two additional deaths.

Six of the dead, including a 10-day-old girl, were from the Wei-guan Golden Dragon Building in the city of Tainan.

Footage released by emergency workers showed rescuers talking to one trapped 36-year-old woman through the rubble, where she had been pinned down by furniture for 16 hours, before digging her out.

The effects of the quake were felt throughout the island.

Television quoted Tainan residents as saying the quake felt worse than the 1999 tremor, centred in central Taiwan.

Authorities said the quake, which struck just before the Lunar New Year holiday, had left around 400,000 without water and more than 2,000 homes without electricity.

Reporters said they could hear cries of help from inside one destroyed building. But Taipei was quiet, with no sense of emergency or obvious damage just before dawn.

Men in camouflage uniforms, apparently military personnel, marched into one area of collapse carrying large shovels. The National Fire Agency said more than 505 people were injured when nine buildings, including a 17-story residential tower, buckled. Around 800 troops have been mobilised to help the rescue effort at Wei-kuan.

The quake was shallow, meaning its effects would have been amplified, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Questions started to rise if the construction crew had cut corners when building the Wei Guan residential complex that was finished in 1989.

The natural disaster, which officials say is the strongest to hit the island nation in “quite a while”, also caused extensive damage to at least seven other buildings in Tainan.