RSOE Emergency and Disaster Information Service

Situation Update No. 1

Posted:2010-03-04, 04:19:08 [UTC]

Ref.no.: EQ-20100304-25197-TWN

Situation Update No. 1
On 2010-03-04 at 08:48:58 [UTC]

Event: Earthquake
Location: Taiwan Kaohsiung County 30 km E Meinung

Number of Injured: 12 person(s)

A magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck southern Taiwan, leaving 12 people injured and shaking buildings in the capital, Taipei. The temblor cut power supplies and caused the country’s high-speed train to halt services. The quake hit at 8:18 a.m. local time, 56 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Kaohsiung, a city of 1.5 million people, the Central Weather Bureau said on its Web site. The quake’s depth was 5 kilometers and 14 aftershocks of magnitude between 3.6 and 4.8 were felt by 10.48 a.m. The epicenter was in a mountainous region near Chia-hsien town, one of the areas worst hit by Typhoon Morakot in August, which killed more than 600 people and caused damages of NT$110 billion ($3.3 billion). It was the second 6.4-magnitude earthquake to rock Taiwan since Dec. 19. Nine people sustained minor injuries in Kaohsiung county and two were hurt in Chiayi county north of the epicenter, Liang Yu-chu, a spokesman at the National Fire Agency disaster’s response center, said by phone. One person was hurt and a fire broke out in a textile factory in Tainan county, he said. A bridge connecting Kaohsiung county and Pingtung county will be closed, said Wang Kuo-tai, a spokesman at the Kaohsiung County Fire Bureau. Buildings swayed in Taipei, about 250 kilometers to the north. Taiwan is regularly struck by earthquakes. The most deadly in recent years, a 7.6-magnitude quake in September 1999, killed about 2,400 people and caused at least $9 billion in damage.

President Ma Ying-jeou will visit the Tainan county disaster emergency response center at 2:15 p.m. today, according to a phone text message from the Presidential Office. The Taiex stock index fell 0.8 percent to 7,569.80 at the close at 1:30 p.m. Taiwan’s dollar rose 0.1 percent to NT$31.96 to the U.S. dollar at the midday break. Power was cut to 540,000 customers for “several minutes,” Clint Chou, a spokesman of Taiwan Power Co., said by telephone from Taipei today. Five generators were out of service after being shaken by the earthquake and the state-run utility is “slowly” restarting them, Chou said. Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp., operator of the high-speed rail that links the north and south of the country, halted services between Kaohsiung and Taichung in central Taiwan, according a notice on the company’s Web site. Kaohsiung subway resumed operations at 10:47 a.m. after suspending services, ETTV said.

Hannstar Display Corp., which operates a so-called fifth- generation liquid-crystal display plant in Tainan county, shut down the factory and evacuated its staff, deputy spokesman Arjay Chang said. Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. evacuated employees from some of its flat-panel factories in southern Taiwan, Loreta Chen, a company spokeswoman said. The company was assessing the impact of the earthquake on its operations, Chen said by phone from Tainan. Kaohsiung’s port and international airport were operating normally, Huang Kuo-ying, deputy director general, Kaohsiung Harbor Bureau and Yang Mao-lin, deputy director general of Kaohsiung International Airport, said in separate calls today. CPC Corp., Taiwan’s state oil refiner, and China Steel Corp., Taiwan’s biggest steel producer, said their Kaohsiung plants are operating normally. Taiwan Sugar Corp.’s operations in Kaohsiung were normal, vice president Chiang Ming-hung said by phone. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics Corp., the world’s two-largest makers of chips designed by other companies, said plants in Tainan county weren’t affected by the quake. Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc., the world’s largest chip packaging and testing company, said its Kaohsiung plants were operating normally. AU Optronics Corp., Taiwan’s largest maker of liquid- crystal displays, suffered “no significant impact” on its finance and operations from an earthquake, the Hsinchu, Taiwan- based company said in an exchange filing today.