Hualien County on Taiwan’s east coast is a scenic, sleepy vacationer space tucked away from the island’s city facilities, with a well-known gorge and aquamarine waters. It additionally occurs to sit down on a number of energetic faults, making it liable to earthquakes.
The county has a inhabitants of about 300,000, in response to the 2020 census, a few third of whom reside within the coastal metropolis of Hualien, the county seat. It is likely one of the most sparsely populated components of Taiwan. About three hours by practice from the capital, Taipei, the town describes itself as the primary place on the island that’s touched by the solar.
Hualien County is residence to Taroko National Park, certainly one of Taiwan’s hottest scenic areas. Visitors come to discover the Taroko Gorge, a striated marble canyon carved by the Liwu River, which cuts via mountains that rise steeply from the coast. The metropolis of Hualien is a well-liked vacation spot as a gateway to the nationwide park.
According to the state-owned Central News Agency, three hikers had been trapped on a path close to the doorway to the gorge on Wednesday, after the quake despatched rocks falling. Two of them had been discovered useless, the information company stated. Administrators stated many roads throughout the park had been lower off by the earthquake, doubtlessly trapping hikers, in response to the report.
Earthquakes have rattled Hualien with some regularity. In 2018, 17 folks had been killed and lots of of others injured when a magnitude 6.5 quake struck simply earlier than midnight, its epicenter a brief distance northeast of the town of Hualien.
Many of the victims in that quake had been in a 12-story constructing that was severely tilted, the primary 4 flooring of which had been largely crushed, in response to information reviews from the time. The subsequent 12 months, the world was shaken by a 6.1-magnitude earthquake that injured 17 folks.
The space has a number of the highest concentrations of Taiwan’s aboriginal inhabitants, with a number of of the island’s Indigenous tribes calling the county residence.
