Death Toll in Taiwan From Magnitude 6.4 Tainan Earthquake May Exceed 100

Summary: Mayor William Lai predicts over 100 dead even though four residents are rescued from a high-rise toppled by Taiwan’s magnitude 6.4 Tainan earthquake.

US Geological Survey ShakeMap of 6.4 magnitude Tainan earthquake: Public Domain, via US Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program

The Taiwan Broadcasting Corporation announced four rescues Feb. 8, 2016, from the magnitude 6.4 Tainan earthquake Feb. 6, 2016, at 3:57 a.m. local time (Feb. 5, 7:57 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time [GMT]).

Emergency workers brought news of rescuing Li Tsung-tian and Tsao Wei-ling, whose husband and two-year-old son are dead, from the Weiguan Jinlong’s (Golden Dragon’s) sixth-floor section. They counted among the day’s success stories the rescues of eight-year-old Lin Su-Chin and her 28-year-old aunt, Chen Mei-jih, from the high-rise apartment building’s fifth-floor section. Tainan government officials described 11 collapsed buildings, 40 fatalities (with all but two from Weiguan Jinlong’s collapse), 116 missing persons, over 340 rescues and 530 injured.

Relief-and-rescue events entailed 23 dogs, 50 Red Cross volunteers, 800 soldiers, 1,000 Tzu Chi volunteers and 8,000 firefighters.

Paul Caruso, geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Golden, Colorado, furnished the magnitude 6.4 Tainan earthquake's data.

Caruso gave the Tainan earthquake the USGS-described occurrence equivalent in terms of GMT at 7:57:27 p.m. and of Pacific Time at 11:57:27 a.m. Feb. 5, 2016. It had an epicenter 28 kilometers (17.39 miles) northeast of Pingtung, 46 kilometers (28.58 miles) northeast of Kaohsiung and 48 kilometers (29.82 miles) east-southeast of Tainan. It indicated very strong intensity, from “oblique thrust faulting at shallow-mid crustal” 23-kilometer (14.29-mile) depths, through 68 aftershocks and with Mercalli observed-effects scale ratings of VII.

The Eurasia continental plate joins the Philippine Sea plate in northwest-southeast convergences at annual velocities of 80 millimeters (3.15 inches).

USGS geophysicists know of the magnitude 6.4 Tainan earthquake as a northwest-southeast ruptured fault dipping shallowly northeastward or as a north-south “striking structure dipping steeply” westward. They list Taiwan among the American, Asian, and Australian land masses along the Pacific Ocean’s fault, tsunami and volcano-riddled Ring of Fire of earthquakes and eruptions. The Eurasia continental plate moves under the Philippine Sea plate south of Taiwan while the opposite takes place to the east and the north of Taiwan. Geophysicists note that northwest-southeast plate convergences at 80-millimeter (3.15-inch) yearly velocities produced, in 100 years, 90 6.4-plus-magnitude events within 250 kilometers (155.34 miles) of Tainan’s earthquake.

Tainan Mayor Lai Ching-te observed that “the number of fatalities [from the magnitude 6.4 Tainan earthquake] will probably exceed 100.”

Taiwanese President Ma Yiing-jeou promised homeless shelters against cold waves while the National Fire Agency described power outages in 900,000 homes and water outages in 400,000.

Elise Hu, National Public Radio correspondent, qualified the Lunar New Year-occurring earthquake as “strong enough to … be felt … in the southern provinces of China.”

Eyewitness accounts revealed that Weiguan Jinlong, the only collapsed building to crumble, appeared to have tin cans, legal before September 1999, as construction fillers in beams.

Taiwanese Interior Minister Chen Wei-zen stated that an investigation of the developer of the 1989-built apartment building will be launched with the end of rescue operations.

It turns out that “scary” tremors awakened Madonna, Rebel Heart singer, in her 17th-story Taipei lodgings in far northern Taiwan.

poster of Taiwan's magnitude 6.4 Tainan earthquake: US Geological Survey, Public Domain, via USGS Earthquake Hazards Program

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

US Geological Survey ShakeMap of 6.4 magnitude Tainan earthquake: Public Domain, via US Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program @ http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20004y6h#impact_shakemap

poster of Taiwan's magnitude 6.4 Tainan earthquake: Public Domain, via US Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program @ http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2016/20160205.php

For further information:

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