About 700 people were either still missing or stranded Thursday, including over 600 who were stranded inside a hotel called Silks Place Taroko, the National Fire Agency said. Authorities said the employees and guests were safe and had food and water, and that work to repair the roads to the hotel was close to completion.Others who were reported to be stranded, including two dozen tourists, about 20 campers and six university students, were also safe, they said.Authorities also said about 60 workers who had been unable to leave a quarry because of blocked and damaged roads were freed. Central News Agency said all were able to leave the mountain safely around noon. Six workers from another quarry were airlifted out.Authorities have not been able to contact about 40 people, mostly hotel employees earlier reported to be in the national park.After the quake, local television showed neighbors and rescue workers lifting residents through windows and onto the street from damaged buildings where the shaking had jammed doors shut. It wasn’t clear Thursday if any people were still trapped in buildings.The quake and its aftershocks caused landslides and damaged roads, bridges and tunnels. The national legislature and sections of Taipei’s main airport suffered minor damage.The earthquake was the strongest to hit Taiwan in 25 years. Local authorities measured the initial quake’s strength as magnitude 7.2, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4.Huang Shiao-en was in her apartment when the quake struck. “At first the building was swinging side to side, and then it shook up and down,” Huang said.The Central Weather Administration recorded more than 300 aftershocks from Wednesday morning into Thursday.The economic losses caused by the quake are still unclear. The self-governed island is the leading manufacturer of the world’s most sophisticated computer chips and other high-technology items that are sensitive to seismic events.Hualien was last struck by a deadly quake in 2018 which killed 17 people and brought down a historic hotel. Taiwan’s worst recent earthquake struck on September 21, 1999, a magnitude 7.7 temblor that caused 2,400 deaths, injured around 100,000 and destroyed thousands of buildings.
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