TAIPEI, Taiwan -- High-rise apartment buildings were knocked off foundations and roads buckled into waves of asphalt when a powerful earthquake struck Taiwan, killing more than 1,700 people and destroying hundreds of homes.
With a preliminary magnitude of 7.6, the quake was the strongest to hit Taiwan in a decade and was about the same strength as the devastating tremor that killed more than 15,000 people in Turkey last month.The quake's epicenter was 90 miles south of Taipei, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center said. It struck about 1:45 a.m. Tuesday (11:45 a.m. MDT Monday), while most of Taiwan's 22 million people were sleeping.
Dazed Taiwanese -- many wearing only underwear or pajamas -- stumbled into dark, chaotic streets, shaken awake by the quake.
By early Wednesday, officials said 1,712 people were dead, more than 4,000 were hurt and almost 3,000 were believed trapped in the rubble. Another 216 were missing, according to the Interior Ministry's disaster management center.
Most of the deaths occurred near the epicenter outside the central city of Taichung -- more than 700 people died in Taichung County, and some 500 died in nearby Nantou County. The area has seen a burst of development in recent years, often with shoddy construction.
Also Tuesday, Chinese President Jiang Zemin extended condolences and offered aid to the quake victims, even though the disaster occurred at a time of tense relations between China and Taiwan. China considers Taiwan a breakaway province.
The quake "hurt the hearts of people on the mainland as the Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are as closely linked as flesh and blood," China's state-run Xinhua News agency said. China's Red Cross said it would provide $100,000 in disaster aid and $60,000 in relief supplies.
Most of the structures that collapsed in Taiwan were new high-rises.
The foundations of some of the apartment blocks in the cities crumpled into piles of concrete boulders, sending the structures crashing into neighboring buildings. Soldiers raced out of buildings with bloodied victims moaning in pain on stretchers.
Nantou County Executive Peng Pai-hsien appealed for donations of bulldozers, cars, quilts and food, saying 100,000 people were left homeless in the county. He said morgues were full of bodies, and the county needed body bags and freezers in the summer heat.
One distraught woman told local television her parents were trapped in a Taichung apartment building. "I don't know what happened to my dad and mom," the sobbing survivor said. "We live in different rooms. I haven't seen them."
In the small city of Puli in Nantou, roads buckled under the stress of the quake, forming large asphalt waves. An apartment building that lost its foundation was left leaning 45 degrees.
In Taipei, the quake wrecked the 78-room Sungshan Hotel, collapsing the bottom stories and setting the badly damaged structure leaning on a neighboring commercial building. About 100 people were rescued and 80 were trapped inside the concrete structure, which also housed a bank and several apartments, officials said.
One 81-year-old survivor said he "crawled like a mouse" through the rubble of his ninth-floor apartment to his balcony, where rescuers pulled him to safety.
"You can't imagine how terrible it was," said survivor Chen Chih-yun, who only suffered bruises.
Fire crews turned hoses on the wreckage as smoke poured from fires raging in several destroyed rooms. A woman pulled from the building urged rescuers to keep looking for survivors.
"Hurry, go rescue people. They're in there. They're inside," said the unidentified woman, who was dressed in street clothes and did not appear to be seriously injured. "I lived on the ninth floor, but now it's the fourth floor."
Fifty people were injured when a 12-story apartment building collapsed in the Taipei suburb of Hsinchuang. An estimated 100 others were still trapped in the building, which collapsed onto a neighboring five-story structure.
But Taipei, with a 2.7 million population, was spared much of the damage. The government called off work and school across the island, leaving the capital's normally congested streets relatively empty.
President Lee Teng-hui flew by helicopter to Taichung to direct rescue work, while Vice President Lien Chan went to Nantou.
Tuesday's quake was Taiwan's worst since a 7.4 magnitude temblor hit the island in 1935, killing 3,276 people. Taiwan is hit by dozens of quakes each year, but most are centered in the Pacific Ocean east of the island and rarely cause damage.