As hundreds remain stranded following Taiwan earthquake, Utahns in the country share experience
Rescue efforts continued in Taiwan on Thursday following a massive earthquake that killed at least 10 people, left more than 1,000 injured and hundreds stranded.
Utahns visiting the country, including a group from Green Canyon High School, recounted the moments they felt the ground shake in the 7.4 magnitude temblor that rocked mountainous Hualien County on the eastern side of the island. The students and their chaperones had visited what became the epicenter a couple of days earlier.
“I was sitting there, and felt like the floor is moving,” junior Zachary Barrus told KSL-TV via Zoom. “Then I looked at, like everybody else was feeling it, too. Some of the items on the walls are starting to shift.”
Parent Julie Allen said the shaking lasted a few minutes. “Then we got on our phones, we started to get Amber Alerts of tsunami warning,” she said.
Members of the group, who are part of the Utah Chinese Dual Immersion Program at the school, said the quake wasn’t as strong in Kaohsiung, but they realized the devastation it caused in Taroko Gorge, where they had just visited.
Earthquake aftermath
The quake, which hit just before 8 a.m. Wednesday, left buildings leaned at severe angles and damaged roads. More than 300 aftershocks have been reported.
Taiwan’s National Fire Agency reported 10 deaths and 1,067 injuries, per CNN. More than 700 people were still stranded Thursday, including some at rock quarries and a national park. The Associated Press reported that 70 workers stuck at two rock quarries were safe, according to the agency, but the roads to reach them were damaged by falling rocks. Six workers were to be airlifted Thursday.
Experts say Taiwan emerged rather unscathed compared to smaller magnitude earthquakes in other countries.
“It is quite remarkable that given an earthquake of this magnitude, we have seen so few reported casualties,” Daniel Aldrich, a political science professor at Northeastern University who studies earthquake resilience around the world, told NPR. “India and Haiti faced less powerful earthquakes but had far more casualties and Taiwan has managed to have so few.”
The last time Taiwan experienced a large earthquake was in 1999, when a 7.3 magnitude quake struck central Taiwan, killing more than 2,000 and collapsing more than 100,000 buildings.
Bigger than Utah quake
Brittany Aubrey, another Utahn traveling in Taiwan, wasn’t near the epicenter, but the shaking jolted her off her hotel bed.
“Everything just started wiggling,” she told KSL-TV. “Everything started falling over. The whole building was just shaking. These light fixtures above our bed that were just shaking like crazy.”
Aubrey called the earthquake far more intense than anything she has experienced, and the constant aftershocks keep her awake.
“It felt like the whole Utah earthquake,” she said. “You feel the rumble, you’re like, ‘Is that an earthquake or is it just like a big truck?’ It’s just that all over again.”
In March 2020, a 5.7 magnitude earthquake rattled homes from southern Idaho to Millard County and caused serious damage to multiple buildings and displaced some residents. Its epicenter was just a few miles from the west-side community of Magna in Salt Lake County.
