A group of 50 workers who were on their way to the hotel and had been trapped on roads are now mostly safe.
“I am lucky to survive this disaster. We were terrified, especially when the earthquake first happened, we thought it was all over, all over, all over, because it was an earthquake, right?” said David Chen, 63, a security manager at the hotel, after he was rescued on Thursday.
“As we were leaving, rocks were still falling. We had to navigate through the gaps between the falling rocks, with the search and rescue team upfront,” he added.
Chen’s 85-year-old mother expressed her relief with tears streaming down her face as they were reunited. For some time, the family did not know if Chen had survived the disaster.
“I was happy to see him. I was happy when he returned. I didn’t sleep at all last night and couldn’t eat anything,” his mother Chen Lan-chih said.
Around 50 aftershocks rattled Hualien overnight, some felt in the capital Taipei.
Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is prone to earthquakes.
More than 100 people were killed in a quake in southern Taiwan in 2016, while a 7.3 magnitude quake killed more than 2,000 people in 1999.
Source: CNA
