Strong temblor rating 6.1 magnitude hits East Taiwan leaving a dozen injured

New Delhi, April 18: Shaking the towers and temporarily halting subway services in the capital Taipei, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake strongly hit the Taiwan’s coastal city of Hualien on Thursday afternoon, with 12 individuals injured and further no immediate casualties or serious damage. 

 

“The calamity hitting at around 1 pm was centered off the coast of Hualien, on Taiwan’s east coast. Powerful shaking was felt in the capital, Taipei, 75 miles to the north, with noticeable landslide on the east coast”, noted the the United States Geological Service.

 

 

 

With small scale power cuts in some districts of Taipei, all the subway service were temporarily cancelled. “It set up a disaster reaction centre after the quake which hit at a depth of 18 km”, reported the weather bureau.

Meanwhile President Tsai Ing-wen using her official facebook handle informed of the high-speed rail service in northern Taiwan, between Taipei and the neighbouring city of Taoyuan, had been temporarily suspended, further asking the officials to gather information from everywhere to check whether there's any damage, and if so, to react as soon as possible.

Taiwan, which sits at the intersection of the Philippine Sea tectonic plate and the Eurasian plate, experiences frequent earthquakes. A magnitude-6.4 quake in Hualien last year badly damaged buildings and killed at least 17 people.

 

Also in year 2016, an earthquake had killed 117 people, almost all of whom died in a 17-story building that collapsed in the southwestern city of Tainan.