Rescuers are racing to find six people still listed as missing in mountainous terrain five days after the most powerful earthquake in 25 years hit the island.
An Australian-Singaporean couple and a mother and two young children are among those still unaccounted for after Wednesday’s quake, Taiwan’s emergency operation centre said at a briefing yesterday.
All five were hiking a trail in eastern Taiwan’s Taroko Gorge, one of the island’s most popular tourist destinations.
The latest deaths bring the total number of fatalities from the earthquake to 13, officials said yesterday.
Almost 1,150 people have been reported injured. In addition to the five hikers, an employee at a nearby limestone mine is also still missing.
The early morning quake levelled buildings in the eastern city of Hualien when it struck shortly before 8am on Wednesday.
It was 7.4 in magnitude, according to the US Geological Survey. Taiwan, which uses a slightly different measure, estimated it as 7.2 and said it was the biggest seismic event to hit Taiwan since 1999. That year, a 7.7-magnitude quake hit the centre of the island and killed more than 2,000 people.
Rescuers managed to free more than 600 people trapped by landslides and collapsed buildings across Taiwan over the weekend.
But the race to locate the six remaining missing people faces increasing challenges as colder, rainy weather envelop the east of the island this week.
Frequent aftershocks also continued to hit the area yesterday, the strongest of which measured 4.8 on the Richter scale, according to Taiwan’s weather administration. — Bloomberg
