Taiwan has been rocked by a powerful earthquake that toppled a three-story building, trapped around 400 tourists on a mountainside and derailed part of a passenger train.
Footage shows the moment the 6.8 magnitude quake also caused the ceiling of a sports center to collapse as people played badminton.
People are seen running to safety as parts of the ceiling collapsed on the badminton court at the Taoyuan Bade Civil Sports Center in the northwest of the country.
The quake was the largest of dozens that have rocked the island since Saturday night, when a 6.4 magnitude quake struck.
Most of the damage appeared to be north of the epicenter on the southeast coast of the island, which the Central Taiwan Meteorological Bureau said was in the city of Chishang at a relatively shallow depth of seven kilometers ( four thousand).
The three-story building, which housed a 7-Eleven convenience store on the ground floor and residences on the upper floors, collapsed in Yuli Township in the eastern Huadong Valley. said the island’s central news agency.
The 70-year-old building owner and his wife were rescued first, but it took longer to reach a 39-year-old woman and her five-year-old daughter.
A photo released by the Hualien city government showed the girl lying on a blanket and being handed a metal ladder from the top of the debris by helmeted rescuers in orange uniforms.
Photos showed the top two floors sprawled across a narrow street and across, with electrical wires pulled by the fallen building.
Meanwhile, police and firefighters rushed to a collapsed bridge over a two-lane road in what appeared to be a rural part of Yuli where three people and one or more vehicles may have fallen, according to local authorities. media.
Firefighters rushed to the scene of the building collapse in Yuli Township
A landslide has trapped nearly 400 tourists on a mountain in Yuli famous for the orange daylilies that cover its slopes this time of year, the Central News Agency reported.
They had no electricity and weak cellphone signal.
A canopy on a platform at Dongli Station in Fuli Town, located between Yuli and the quake’s epicenter in Chishang, hit a train, leaving three of the carriages tilted, the agency said, citing the railway administration.
The tremor was felt at the northern end of the island in the capital Taipei.
In the city of Taoyuan, west of Taipei and 210 kilometers (130 miles) north of the epicenter, a man was injured when a ceiling collapsed on the fifth floor of a sports center.
The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami advisory for several southern Japanese islands near Taiwan, but later lifted it.
