Taiwan earthquake last week had no casualties by Corina Ciubotaru

A few earthquakes shook Taiwan's capital city of Taipei on Friday and fortunately made no victims. The first one had a magnitude of 6.5, while the second was a 5.7. The first quake lasted for about 30 seconds and occurred at 17:51 GMT on Thursday, which is 1:51 A.M. local time. Its aftershock sent the residents of high rise buildings out in the streets in the middle of the night, but their homes sustained only minor damage. The first quake was located 16.78 miles under the sea, 46.35 miles southeast of the city of Ilan. Ilan is located around 50 miles east of Taipei. The second tremor was located in the same region, and a third one of 3.9 degrees was felt in the southeastern region of Taitung. Earthquakes are common in the country, but usually they do not cause serious damage. The last big quake took place in 1999, when 2,000 people died in a 7.6 degree earthquake that worried the computer world. It hit central Taiwan, home to large motherboard manufacturers Acer Laboratories Inc. and Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. Their businesses remained operational after the tremor, but another quake in late 2006 had seriously damaged Internet links in Hong Kong and killed 2 people in Taiwan. It had affected communications in the entire region, including China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Singapore. It made telecom officials in the area take note of the fragility of the communications industry and make decisions on how to improve security for Internet lines in the future.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070906/ts_nm/quake_taiwan_dc;_ylt=AlhdIgFGPwJHFxcy1hAi.Jas0NUE

by Corina Ciubotaru for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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