The Taiwan Central Weather Bureau has reported a Magnitude 7.2 Earthquake at a depth of 15.5 km, about 25 km to the south of the city of Hualien, Taiwan, slightly before 8.00 am local time on Wednesday 3 April 2024 (slightly before midnight on Tuesday 2 April, GMT) on Sunday 18 September 2022. The event is reported to have killed at least nine people, with more than 900 more injured, and to have caused several buildings to collapse, as well as triggering a series of landslides. The Earthquake was felt on the Chinese mainland as far north as Shanghai and Nanjing.
The event was the largest Earthquake to hit Taiwan in 25 years, and was followed by 76 aftershocks within the next five ours, thirteen of which had Magnitudes above 5.0, with the largest being a Magnitude 6.4 event. Dozens of buildings are reported to have collapsed in city of Hualien, and landslides triggered by the Earthquake are reported to have trapped large numbers of vehicles and their occupants inside tunnels on the Suhua Highway, which runs along the east coast of the island between Yilan to Hualian.
Taiwan has a complex tectonic setting, lying on the boundary between the Eurasian and Philippine Plates, with the Eurasian Plate being subducted beneath the Philippine Plate in the South and the Philippine Plate being subducted beneath the Eurasian in the East. Subduction is not a smooth process even in simple settings, with plates typically sticking together as pressure from tectonic expansion elsewhere builds up, then suddenly breaking apart and shifting abruptly, causing Earthquakes.
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