Chien, her 3-year-old daughter and her husband were in their bedroom in Tainan –Taiwan’s oldest city — when a magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck.
“I was trapped in a room in a building toppled by the quake,” said the mother, who only gave her surname.
“The smell of gas was thick in the air and I was worried that I would be killed by an explosion if not crushed to death in the collapsed building,” she told Taiwan’s official Central News Agency.
It was a frightening ordeal, one that she has dealt with before.
She lived in central Taiwan before moving to Tainan and managed to survive the 1999 quake that killed more than 2,000 people.
“I moved to Tainan after I got married and now I have encountered another major earthquake,” she told CNA.
‘Ring of fire’
Before rescuers freed them, Chien and her family were trapped for three hours in their sixth-floor apartment in the Weiguan Jinlong residential complex, a 16-story residential building in Tainan.
Twenty-one people died when the Weiguan Jinlong collapsed. In all, at least 23 people were killed in the quake and more than 500 others injured, CNA reported.
“This was strong enough to not only be felt here in the (Taiwanese) capital city of Taipei but also in the southern provinces of China,” Hu said.
As of Sunday morning, at least 121 people were still unaccounted for in Taiwan, CNA reported. A cold wave moving into the area added to rescuers’ sense of urgency.
Seven other buildings in Tainan, a city of 1.9 million people, were damaged.
Taiwan is in the so-called “Ring of Fire,” an area in the Pacific Ocean where intense tectonic plate movement causes frequent earthquakes.
“Taiwan is very used to earthquakes and tremors, but this is far more significant than the island has seen in quite a while,” Elise Hu, an NPR correspondent who was in Taipei when the quake hit, told CNN.
The building
The Weiguan Jinlong building now looks like an accordion from above. Aerial footage from CNN affiliate SETTV showed the collapsed building, with white smoke or dust still rising.
“The building essentially collapsed onto itself,” Hu said. “When you see the aerial images around Tainan, the rest of the buildings are standing. But this particular apartment complex is as damaged as it is.”
One woman told CNN affiliate EBC that rescuers had to cut a hole in order to help her family get out.
“Fortunately we were stuck under a space created by a baby crib and a closet door, so that things won’t fall on us and air was able to get in,” she said from the hospital, where she was receiving treatment for a leg injury. “I was so afraid.”
Video shot by SETTV showed rescuers helping people from the rubble, including one man with blood on his face. In another shot, rescuers carefully lower an elderly woman strapped to a backboard.
The country’s interior minister and other officials say they will conduct an investigation into the building’s collapse, according to CNA.
After residents raised concerns about the safety of the building, Tainan Mayor Lai Ching-te said he will order a probe as well.
‘Imagine something like this happening during Thanksgiving’
The quake struck as many in Taiwan prepare to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
It’s one of the country’s biggest holidays, and some people have as many as nine days off, Hu said.
“If you can imagine something like this happening during Thanksgiving holiday weekend or Christmas travel, that’s the equivalent of what’s happening here in Taiwan right now,” she said.