‘Like a scene from the movies’: Singapore actress Yvonne Lim shares Taiwan earthquake experience

SINGAPORE: Singaporean Yvonne Lim was heading for a nap after sending her children to school when an earthquake struck Taiwan - the island’s strongest in 25 years.

Everything started shaking and the intensity got worse as the seconds dragged on. That is when she realised it was serious, said Ms Lim, a Mediacorp artiste who has been living with her family in Taipei for the past nine years.

“I ran downstairs to my living room. I forgot my handphone. I just forgot everything. It was so shaky and you could even barely walk in (a) straight line. It was like a scene from the movies that we watch,” she told CNA’s Singapore Tonight on Wednesday (Apr 3). 

“And you couldn't think properly. It was very, very scary. The tremors were very, very bad.”

While it lasted just a few minutes, that was not how it felt, she said.

It might be very short …  three or four minutes. But (it actually feels) very long when there's an earthquake. You were like really holding onto your last breath, hoping that it would stop,” she said.

Ms Lim grabbed her phone so she could find out how her children and husband were doing, and “left some last words” on her Instagram account, fearing the worst.

The experience was so traumatising that she thought it might spell the end of her time living in Taipei, she said.

Ms Lim said she lives in a new anti-earthquake building and that while the building remained strong following the tremors, and the residents were safe, there could be some damage at home.

“Water was splashing out from the stove … And I have things falling down. Drawers were coming in and out, and the doors were also swaying. It was scary in the sense that you're all alone and everything is just crashing down on you. But thankfully, we did not have any major damage,” she said. 

AFTERSHOCKS A CRUCIAL ISSUE

Singaporean actress Gayathri Segaran, who was also in Taipei on a holiday, said that it was her first time experiencing an earthquake, and it took her some time to realise that she was in the middle of one.

The shaking propelled water containers in her rented apartment across the floor, dislodged paint and plaster from the walls, and made items like a fan topple over. There was a blackout following the quake, but the electricity returned quickly after, she said. 

She added that she experienced about six aftershocks.

“(For) the first two hours, (there) was so much of worry and anxiety, question marks, confusion, shock. Because we’ve seen the news on what can happen to buildings when an earthquake happens. You always have to think about the worst part of it,” she told CNA.

On Thursday, the death toll from the 7.2-magnitude earthquake in eastern Taiwan rose to 10, while the number of people injured climbed past 1,000.

There were no reports of Singaporeans injured in the disaster as of Wednesday, Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said in a press statement.

Geophysicist Stuart Clark said that although the disaster was severe, there are far fewer casualties than in other similar-magnitude earthquakes. 

This shows that a lot of work has been put in by the Taiwanese authorities to look at building codes and safety, said the associate professor from University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney. 

However, with more than 140 people trapped under rubble, one of the crucial issues would be aftershocks, he said. 

“There's been a series of aftershocks … in the six hours after the main earthquake struck. One of them was 6.4 in magnitude already on its own, quite a severe earthquake, so that will worry the rescuers,” he told CNA’s Asia First on Thursday.

While he noted that the aftershocks have quietened down, they could continue, he said. 

LARGE QUAKES ARE “HARD TO PREDICT”

On Taiwan’s lack of warning from its earthquake alert system, Assoc Prof Clark said that such quakes are hard to predict.

“They try to have some warning systems where they look at quiet periods heading into a large earthquake. But you are going to get a lot of false positives there, a lot of false warnings. So, it's very, very hard to predict,” he said.

“I don't know that the authorities could have done much about this. These large quakes tend to happen very quickly, and the only thing you can really do is look at warnings for landslides and tsunamis that happen in the wake of those quakes.”

Taiwan is in a unique position geographically where there is a lot of seismic activity, he noted.

“This sort of combination of steep topography and earthquakes make Taiwan quite vulnerable,” he said.

Assoc Prof Clark noted that there have been four other large earthquakes in Taiwan since the devastating Chi-Chi earthquake in 1999, so the next one may not be soon. However, other fault systems across the region could be triggered independently of Wednesday’s quake, he cautioned.

“I don't think you can really relax when you're living in these earthquake-prone areas. You have to be alert all the time,” he said.

Additional reporting by Chloe Teo