Over 600 people still trapped in aftermath of Taiwan earthquake

Hundreds of people remain trapped and stranded after the biggest earthquake in decades hit Taiwan on Wednesday.

More than 600 people, including about 450 at a hotel in the Taroko national park, remain stranded in various locations cut off by rockslides and other damage.

Rescuers are also frantically trying to recover trapped bodies, including two beneath boulders on a hiking trail.

Four more people remain missing on the same Shakadang Trail in Taroko National Park, famed for its rugged mountainous terrain.

At least 12 people were killed by the magnitude 7.4 earthquake that struck on Wednesday morning off Taiwan’s east coast, and 10 others were still missing.

The trapped bodies found on Friday were a man and a woman, but they have not been identified, according to Taiwanese media reports.

Survivors have said there were rocks tumbling onto roadways, trapping them in tunnels until rescuers arrived to free them. In the city of Hualien, a building left tilting over a street at a precarious angle was being carefully torn down.

The relatively low number of deaths from such a powerful quake has been attributed to strict construction standards and widespread public education campaigns on the earthquake-prone island.

Wednesday is the largest seismic shift in decades, with the last major quake hitting the nation in 1999 with the 7.7 magnitude earthquake killing 2,400 people.

Rescuers searching the Taroko National Park after an earthquake in Hualien(Picture: CNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Demolition work is underway at a building collapsed by the earthquake (Picture: AP)

People leave a helicopter after being rescued from an isolated area (Picture: AP)

It struck about 11 miles south-southwest of Hualien and was about 21 miles deep.

Multiple aftershocks followed, and the USGS said one of the subsequent quakes was a magnitude of 6.5 and seven miles deep.

Shallower quakes tend to cause more surface damage. The earthquake triggered a tsunami warning that was later lifted.

‘Earthquakes are a common occurrence, and I’ve grown accustomed to them. But today was the first time I was scared to tears by an earthquake,’ said Taipei resident Hsien-hsuen Keng.

‘I was awakened by the earthquake. I had never felt such intense shaking before.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.