Quake Shakes Taiwan

A powerful earthquake rocked Taiwan on Wednesday, shaking office buildings in the capital Taipei but there were no reports of major damage or injures.

The earthquake, measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale, was centered in the ocean, about six miles northeast of the fishing village of Suao in northeast Taiwan.

The Central Weather Bureau said the quake was a strong aftershock from an earthquake six weeks ago that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale and killed five people and brought down several houses.

Wednesday's tremor struck at 0346 GMT and made skyscrapers in Taipei sway for about a minute.

"It's terrible," one bank worker said. "It's shaking, it's still shaking."

The government's disaster response center said a house in Ilan, near the epicenter, was damaged while cable station ETTV said a three-month-old boy was injured when he was hit by a falling television set.

Taipei's subway system was shut down for a two-hour check and then resumed normal operations.

Taiwan lies on a seismically active stretch of the Pacific basin - with 51 different fault lines crisscrossing the island - and earthquakes occur frequently. One of the worst recorded - in September 1999 - killed more than 2,400 people and damaged 50,000 buildings.

On March 31, two cranes plunged from the 56th-story of what will become one of the world's tallest buildings, killing five construction workers.

CTS television showed pictures of office workers in Ilan, south of Taipei, evacuating their building.

"One of my colleagues immediately ran to a television set hung on the wall to stop it from dropping to the floor," said Rita Liang, a bank dealer in a 13-storey building in Taipei.

Almost 300 aftershocks had been recorded two hours after the initial quake, eight of which had a magnitude of more than four, the weather bureau said.

"We will see aftershocks of four- or five-magnitude in the next two weeks. They should be seen as a natural release of energy," a seismologist at the weather bureau said.

Officials at Hsinchu Science Park, the home of Taiwan's high tech industry, said they had not received any damage reports from companies.

Hsinchu is on the opposite side of the island from the quake's epicenter.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world's largest microchip foundry, said it did not see any immediate impact from the quake.

"The power did not stop and buildings were not evacuated," a TSMC official said.

Rival United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) did not see serious damage either, a UMC official said.

On the stock exchange, shares quickly recovered after dipping because of the quake and the index ended up 2.69 percent.