Dozens of earthquakes with a maximum magnitude of 6.3 shook the island of Taiwan between Monday and Tuesday, whose government attributed it to aftershocks of a large earthquake that left 17 dead at the beginning of the month.
The earthquakes caused the partial collapse of two buildings in the eastern city of Hualien.
According to images broadcast by the state news agency CNA, a hotel and a block of flats partially collapsed in this town, where another 7.2 magnitude earthquake occurred twenty days ago, the most intense recorded on the island in the last 25 years. years.
The hotel was currently undergoing renovations and the residential building, which suffered serious damage after the April 3 earthquake, was unoccupied at the time of the earthquakes, so there were no casualties or injuries, local authorities reported.
The tremors, which coincided with a day of heavy rain, have also caused landslides and rockslides on several roads in Hualien county.
Consequently, the county government announced the closure of schools and offices in the region and asked residents to stay away from “dangerous” buildings.
The first in this series of strong earthquakes had a magnitude of 5.5 and occurred at 17:08 local time on Monday in Shoufeng Township, Hualien County, at a depth of ten kilometers.
Aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake
Since then, and until 09:30 on Tuesday, the Central Meteorological Agency (CWA) counted around 200 tremors of different intensity, including two of magnitude 6.0 and 6.3 recorded between 02:26 and 02: 32, respectively, in the early hours of Tuesday.
This latest earthquake, the strongest since April 3, was felt throughout the island of Taiwan and had its maximum intensity (5 out of 7) in Hualien County.
The capital also experienced the shock of these two earthquakes: Taipei’s buildings shook strongly, moving doors and windows and causing objects to fall in the middle of the night.
The director of the CWA Seismological Center, Wu Chien-fu, stated this Tuesday that this series of earthquakes were aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake, while acknowledging that more tremors are expected in the coming months, according to the agency. CNA.
The earthquake of April 3, which caused 17 deaths and more than 1,100 injuries, has caused more than 1,000 aftershocks of different magnitudes in recent weeks, most of them located north of the epicenter of the earthquake, and it is only now beginning to be release energy in the south, said the expert.
Taiwan sits at the confluence of the Philippine and Eurasian plates, so earthquakes are frequent on the island.
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