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Four people have been killed in Taiwan after the strongest earthquake to hit the island in 25 years damaged buildings, blocked rail traffic and forced the evacuation of semiconductor manufacturing plants.
The earthquake – which had a magnitude of 7.2 according to Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency and 7.4 according to the US Geological Survey – struck at 7.58am on Wednesday off the east coast, 25 km to the south of Hualien, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants.
Taiwan’s National Fire Agency said four people died and 57 others were injured. In Hualien, one of the two buildings tilted due to the earthquake was completely evacuated without casualties. In another multi-storey building, rescuers were still confirming how many people were trapped in the apartments, the local government said.
New Taipei City, the municipality surrounding the capital, suspended school and work for a day.
Taiwan is one of the most important semiconductor manufacturing centers in the world. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest contract chip maker, evacuated staff from some of its factories.
“TSMC’s safety systems are functioning normally,” the company said in a statement. “We are currently confirming details of the impact.” The company added that it had suspended work on the construction sites for the day pending further inspections.
The high-precision machinery used to manufacture semiconductors is highly vulnerable to unplanned outages. The administration of Hsinchu Science Park, where TSMC has many factories, said the company and Powerchip, another manufacturer, had carried out preventive shutdowns of some machinery, local media reported. TSMC did not respond to a request for comment.
Landslides on Taiwan’s mountainous Pacific coast have severed the only road connecting Hualien county, a mostly agricultural region home to about 330,000 people, with the north.
Many people began traveling there this week ahead of a long holiday weekend starting Thursday.
The earthquake temporarily knocked out electricity to more than 300,000 households, but according to state-owned Taiwan Power Company, supplies had been restored to most affected homes by 11.30am.
Formosa Petrochemical said it has suspended port operations at Mailiao, one of the world’s largest refineries.
The impact of Wednesday’s quake appeared much smaller than that of the earthquake on September 21, 1999, which hit the most densely populated areas at night and killed more than 2,000 people. That earthquake, the strongest since 1935, also caused extensive damage to the production of chips.
A tsunami warning was issued after Wednesday’s earthquake for Okinawa prefecture on Japan’s southern island and later lifted.