7.5 earthquake in Hualien, Taiwan

I've been up there and seen it. Not surprised that the building swayed, though. 7.5 is a major earthquake. My in-laws said there were still aftershocks today. They basically felt the quake over a two-day period.

 

At least the aftershocks should be over by then. I was in Taiwan less than two months after the 1999 earthquake (7.7 magnitude), just south of the epicenter. The aftershocks went on daily, multiple times a day. Some of the aftershocks were estimated as high as 5.2 by the workers. For a while, there was an aftershock every night at 8:00 to 8:15. The admin building at the plant was very heavily reinforced for earthquakes, and was only 2 stories high, so it was a very different experience from the 8-story hotel, which was built more on a budget. The hotel had a slight swaying to the quake, while the admin building was very jolting and teeth-rattling, like a roller coaster that is not properly assembled. I was in a hotel in Kaohsiung a year or so before then, and a large quake (about 6.5) struck at 2:30 a.m. Up on the 11th floor, the building swayed so much, I was afraid it might collapse. Very scary being in a dark hotel room when the room starts to sway and keeps swaying for 30+ seconds (an eternity). I was frozen in place--I couldn't have moved if I wanted to.

 

Wow.

 

Holy crap!!!. I started thinking "that's not really shaking that much"....and then the boulders started raining down like something out of a SyFy Channel movie. Those poor people.

 

one lucky car that the tunnel was there when they got the alert.
Wonder about the biker though.

 

From what my wife has been able to gather, Taroko Gorge (one of the Eight Natural Wonders of Asia, located near Hualien) was badly damaged in the quake. The marble cliffs containing the trails through the Swallows Nesting Area largely collapsed. I think the Buddhist monastery on the side of a cliff may have also been destroyed.