Earthquake Strikes Central Taiwan; One Dead, Some Factories Disrupted

03/27/2013| 05:23am US/Eastern


--Officials say collapsing wall kills one person

--TSMC says quake had "minimal impact" on production

(Recasts first paragraph to update with one person dead; adds new details of damage and factory disruptions throughout) By Aries Poon and Lorraine Luk


TAIPEI--An earthquake killed at least one person and disrupted operations at some electronics factories in central Taiwan on Wednesday morning, but the rest of the island was largely unscathed.

The Central Weather Bureau said that the magnitude 6.1 quake struck at 10:03 a.m. local time (0203 GMT) and was centered in Nantou County at a depth of 15.4 kilometers. Aftershocks as strong as magnitude 4.3 rattled the area for the next two and a half hours. The initial temblor shook buildings in the capital, Taipei, 120 kilometers to the north.

A collapsing wall killed a 72-year-old woman at a temple in Nantou County, the National Fire Agency said, adding that 19 other people across central Taiwan were injured, mostly by falling objects. The injured included one person struck by a section of ceiling at a government office in Nantou County, the fire agency said.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (>> Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg. Co. Ltd.), the world's largest contract chip maker by revenue, evacuated two of its factories in central and northern Taiwan after the earthquake. But a spokesman for the Hsinchu-based company said that employees had gone back to work and that the quake had a "minimal impact" on production.

TSMC added that it has an emergency mechanism that automatically orders employees to evacuate when an earthquake of magnitude 4 or greater is detected.

Flat-panel maker AU Optronics Cop. (>> AU Optronics Corp.) said Wednesday afternoon that operations at some of its facilities in central Taiwan remained suspended after halting because of the quake. Innolux Corp. (>> Innolux Corp) said that its production was unaffected.

At The Wall Street Journal's Taipei office the quake was felt for at least 15 seconds, shaking the ceiling violently enough that it squeaked.

Television footage showed large boulders littering roads in central Taiwan, as well as books scattered on the floor of a public library and home interiors sprinkled with broken glass, fallen wall tiles and other debris.

Taiwan lies near the junction of two tectonic plates and is frequently hit by earthquakes. The last major quake--a magnitude 7.6 temblor that killed more than 2,000 people--struck in 1999 and was also centered in Nantou County.

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