OREGON, USA — A powerful earthquake rocked the entire island of Taiwan, collapsing buildings and creating a tsunami that washed ashore on southern Japanese islands.
There is no tsunami danger for Oregon, Washington, California, British Columbia or Alaska, the National Weather Service said. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center also said there was no tsunami threat to Hawaii or the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.
Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency gave the magnitude as 7.2 while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4. The depth was about 35 kilometers (21 miles).
Television showed buildings in the eastern city of Hualien shaken off their foundations. Train service was suspended across the island of 23 million people, as was subway service in Taipei. The quake struck at 7:58 a.m. on the other side of the island from the capital, but was strong enough to knock items off shelves in the city.
The head of Taiwan's earthquake monitoring bureau, Wu Chien-fu, said effects were detected as far away as Kinmen, a Taiwanese-controlled island off the coast of China. Multiple aftershocks were felt in Taipei in the hour after the initial quake.
The USGS said one of the subsequent quakes was 6.5 magnitude and 11.8 kilometers (7 miles) deep.
The quake was believed to be the biggest in Taiwan since a temblor in 1999 caused extensive damage. Taiwan lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire," the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world's earthquakes occur.
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