How Island Kept Death Toll Low In Massive Earthquake

For Nina Huang, it was the shaking that jolted her awake. "The first thing I did when I woke up was to hold the cupboard next to my daughter. I was afraid that it might fall down on her," she recalled. Then her phone buzzed with a warning about a tsunami.

- Amy Hawkins and Chi Hui Lin

The biggest fear for Huang and her husband was that the bridge connecting their waterfront village of Yanliao to the city of Hualien would collapse, leaving them stranded. So they drove to the city with their one-year-old daughter and waited in a car park for the tremors to stop, away from any buildings that might collapse on them.

But the bridge did not collapse. And despite the fact that the 7.4 magnitude earthquake, which struck along the east coast shortly before 8am last Wednesday, was Taiwan's biggest in 25 years, relatively few people died or were injured. In 2016, a smaller quake claimed more than 100 lives.

While last week's earthquake killed at least 12 people, Hualien county, which has a population of more than 300,000, fared remarkably well in the face of dramatic tremors.

Taiwan has learned to react quickly to emergencies because of the omnipresent threats of natural or humanmade disasters. The island and its surrounding islets sit near the intersection of three tectonic plates in the world's most seismically active region, known as the "ring of fire".