Taiwan's Meteorological Forecasting Center later issued a tsunami warning after the earthquake and evacuated people in the disaster-prone area to safety.
A five-story building in Hualien was heavily damaged, with the first floor collapsing and the rest tilting at a 45-degree angle. In the capital Taipei, bricks fell from old buildings and from some new office complexes. Train and subway services were suspended across the island of 23 million people.
Building collapse in Taiwan affects the country.
Train services across the island, as well as subway services in Taipei, were suspended. Taiwan's earthquake monitoring agency said the quake had a magnitude of 7.2, while the US Geological Survey recorded a magnitude of 7.5.
Taiwan's earthquake monitoring agency said the magnitude of the quake was 7.2 on the Richter scale, while the US Geological Survey (USGS) gave the figure as 7.4. It occurred at 7:58 a.m. on April 3 (local time), about 18 kilometers south-southwest of Hualien and at a depth of about 35 kilometers.
The earthquake is believed to be the largest to hit Taiwan since a devastating quake in 1999. Taiwan lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a seismic fault line circling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.
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