Residents panic as quake hits Taiwan; no major casualties

Ceilings fell, walls collapsed and items on supermarket shelves came tumbling down as a magnitude 6 earthquake rocked Taiwan yesterday. However, no major casualties were reported, police and government officials said.

Panicked residents either rushed out of houses or sought shelter under solid furniture in their high-rise buildings, mindful of the devastating magnitude 7.6 quake that killed more than 2,300 people in central Taiwan in 1999.

'I was sitting inside the conference room when the earthquake rocked, and without a second thought I rushed out of the building,' a resident near the earthquake's epicentre was seen telling a local television reporter.

The quake struck at 5.32pm, with the epicentre located in Nantou county in central Taiwan, about 200 kilometres south of Taipei, according to the Seismological Centre under the Central Weather Bureau.

The tremor was followed by at least six aftershocks, including a magnitude 5.7 one that sent another chill through residents.

The tremor was felt throughout Taiwan, with skyscrapers in Taipei shaking for more than a minute. Many houses in Mingchien town, the closest place to the epicentre, reported small cracks in the walls of the buildings there, and part of a classroom ceiling at a high school had come down, slightly injuring a student, police said.

A wall of a three-storey building in Hsihu town in the central county of Changhua collapsed.