Death Toll From Taiwan Earthquake Tops 2,100 -- Hope Fades for Survivors

Doug Rekenthaler Jr., Managing Editor, DisasterRelief.org
On a day when the voices of the Taiwanese people normally herald the dawn of the annual moon festival, only one voice mattered: that of a tiny, six-year-old boy trapped deep beneath a mountain of rubble. After nine hours, a South Korean rescue team pulled the dehydrated child from the ruins of his former home, his parents almost certainly dead amid the concrete slabs around him.

The rescue of the boy 90 hours after Tuesday's massive earthquake was the only bright spot on a day when officials acknowledged that the prospects of finding additional survivors was slim at best. The death toll on Friday stood at more than 2,100, with nearly 400 others still missing.

More than 8,100 people were injured in the magnitude-7.6 temblor, which devastated portions of the island nation.

Powerful aftershocks continued to rumble across the country, including a magnitude-5.6 tremor Thursday night. More than 5,000 aftershocks have rocked Taiwan since the original quake, many of them with a magnitude of 6.0 or higher. With each new shake, rescue teams and shelter residents alike scramble into streets and other open spaces, terrified that already damaged buildings will come crashing down.

As in Turkey, where a similarly large earthquake killed more than 15,000 people on August 17, the Taiwanese people are demanding answers from builders in a nation prone to earthquakes. Early Friday, an architect and an engineer were arrested in connection with the deaths of 20 residents of a collapsed 12-story apartment building which they designed and built. Other contractors, architects, and engineers have been detained and questioned, and authorities expect more arrests as inspections of doomed structures are conducted.

Also like their Turkish counterparts, thousands of Taiwanese have taken up semi-permanent residence in parks and fields because they either are unable or unwilling to return to their homes. More than 100,000 people are believed to have been left homeless by the earthquake.

A number of foreign countries and humanitarian agencies have committed recovery personnel and resources to the Taiwanese government, including the United States, Singapore, Japan, Turkey, Russia, the Philippines, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, France, Spain, South Korea, Israel, and Thailand. Additionally, the American Red Cross on Thursday donated $100,000 to the relief operation and the Chinese Red Cross has promised to provide the same figure.

Rescue and relief operations have been seriously hampered by Taiwan's shattered transportation and communication infrastructures. The earthquake and the thousands of aftershocks have crippled bridges and highways alike, knocked out electricity and phone service to more than six million people, and shattered water and sanitation systems. Travel has been described as nearly impossible in some regions, including the hardest hit counties, Nantou and Taichung.

Families and friends continue to maintain silent, anxious vigils beside pancaked apartment buildings and hotels as bulldozers and other heavy machinery tear into the rubble in search of their loved ones. Unfortunately, it is a largely unspoken rule in earthquake recovery operations that after 48 hours 90 percent of those trapped in rubble die. There are exceptions to this rule, as with the rescued boy.

A member of the South Korean rescue team, one of many from around the country assisting the Taiwanese, said he heard "a tiny, tiny voice" from deep beneath the collapsed building. Drilling small holes, the team eventually confirmed that the child was trapped beneath 10 feet of concrete and other building material.

Seismologists have indicated that Tuesday's earthquake was unusual both because of where it struck and its depth beneath the surface of the earth. Although Taiwan is a seismically volatile region because of its location along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," most quakes occur far offshore and are deep enough that they cause little damage. Tuesday's quake, however, struck the island itself and appeared to have been very shallow.

Geologically speaking, a tectonic drama is unfolding beneath Taiwan that ultimately assures the island's destruction. Essentially, Taiwan sits atop the meeting place between the Philippine plate and the much larger Eurasian plate. Beneath the northern stretches of the island, the Philippine plate is being forced beneath the Eurasian plate, a process known to seismologists as subduction. But to the island's south, the opposite is occurring. The result is extreme seismic volatility.

Tuesday's earthquake is the strongest to strike the country since a magnitude-7.8 quake struck the same region 13 years ago. That temblor, however, was centered deep beneath the earth, resulting only in 15 deaths. The last major earthquake to strike Taiwan occurred in 1935. The magnitude-7.4 earthquake killed 3,276 people.

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