(Reuters) — Rescue workers raced against the clock and searched for survivors at a site where a 17-storey apartment building toppled during an earthquake that has killed at least five in southern Taiwan on Saturday (February 6).
Among the bodies found in the collapsed building in Tainan was a 10-day-old girl.
Rescue workers continued to search for about 35 people feared trapped inside.
Authorities said there were 92 households and 256 people living in the collapsed apartment building, but they did not know how many were actually there when the quake struck.
The 6.4 magnitude tremor hit at around 4 a.m. (2000 GMT FRIDAY), at the start of a Lunar New Year holiday.
Rescuers mounted hydraulic ladders and a crane to scour the wreckage, plucking 221 survivors to safety so far, with dozens taken to hospital, a fire brigade official said.
Elsewhere in the city of 2 million people, several buildings tilted at alarming angles but a fire department official said rescue efforts were now focused entirely on the apartment block.
The quake was centred 43 km (27 miles) southeast of Tainan, at a depth of 23 km (14 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. Several aftershocks shook Tainan, Taiwan’s weather bureau said.
The quake initially cut power to 168,000 households in Tainan, many of whose residents lived through a massive 1999 tremor that killed about 2,400 people. Later, utility Taipower said power had been restored to all but about 900 households.
Taiwan lies in the seismically active “Pacific Ring of Fire”. Television quoted Tainan residents as saying the quake felt worse than the 1999 tremor, centred in central Taiwan.
