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 As rescuers searched for survivors, questions were raised about
the construction of the Wei-guan Golden Dragon Building in the
southern city of Tainan, with its floors that pancaked down on each
other when the 6.4 magnitude tremor hit at around 4 a.m. (2000 GMT),
at the start of a Lunar New Year holiday.
Nine of the dead, including a 10-day-old girl, were from the
apartment building. The baby was found in her dead father's arms,
media reported.
Rescuers mounted hydraulic ladders and a crane to scour the ruins,
plucking survivors to safety, with dozens taken to hospital.
An 18-year old man was found alive and conscious shortly after dark,
and rescuers were working to get him free, Taiwan television said.
Buildings in nine other locations in the city of 2 million people
had collapsed and five were left tilting at alarming angles, a
government emergency center said.
 But a fire department official said rescue efforts were focused on
the apartment block, where a child's clothes fluttered from a
first-floor laundry line and the smell of leaking gas hung in the
air.
"I was watching TV and after a sudden burst of shaking, I heard a
boom. I opened my metal door and saw the building opposite fall
down," said a 71-year-old neighbor who gave his name as Chang.
A plumber, he said he fetched some tools and a ladder and prised
some window bars open to rescue a woman crying for help.
"She asked me to go back and rescue her husband, child, but I was
afraid of a gas explosion so I didn't go in. At the time there were
more people calling for help, but my ladder wasn't long enough so
there was no way to save them."
The quake was centered 43 km (27 miles) southeast of Tainan, at a
depth of 23 km (14 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Earlier in the day, an elderly woman, wrapped in blankets, was
strapped to a board and slowly slid down a ramp to the ground as the
cries of those still trapped rang out. Rescuers used dogs and
acoustic equipment to pick up signs of life in the rubble.
Authorities said there were 96 apartment units in the Golden Dragon
Building and 256 registered residents. Late in the day, city mayor
William Lai said 5 people were missing there.
Rescuers clad in red and yellow overalls pulled 250 survivors from
the ruins and later inserted huge supports under slabs of leaning
concrete to buttress the ruins as they searched for more.
The fire department said 115 people had been taken to hospital from
around Tainan.
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SEVERAL BUILDINGS DAMAGED
City officials said it was too early to determine if poor
construction was a factor in the building's collapse.
Liu Shih-chung, city government deputy secretary general, said
television footage of the ruins of the commercial-residential
building suggested the possibility of structural problems related to
poor-quality reinforced steel and cement.
The construction and engineering companies that built the complex
are no longer operating, records showed.
Two neighbors said they had felt nervous about the construction when
the building was going up in the early 1990s.
"I looked at it and thought, only people from out of town would buy
there. We local people would never dare," said one of the neighbors,
Yang Shu-mei.
A major earthquake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed about 2,400
people and caused damage across the island, which lies in the
seismically active "Pacific Ring of Fire".
President Ma Ying-jeou visited an emergency center and hospital in
Tainan while President-elect Tsai Ing-wen canceled appointments to
help coordinate rescue efforts.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office, which is in charge of Beijing's
relations with the self-ruled island, said China was willing to
provide help if needed, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said.
Beijing regards Taiwan as a wayward province.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world's largest
contract chipmaker and supplier to Apple Inc, said some wafers made
in Tainan had been damaged, affecting no more than 1 percent of
first-quarter shipments.
Other major Apple suppliers in Taiwan reported no impact on
operations.
(Additional reporting by J.R. Wu, Carol Lee, Pichi Chuang, Eric
Walsh, Eric Beech, Elizabeth Dilts, Jeanny Kao and Ben Blanchard;
Writing by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Robert Birsel and Christopher
Cushing)
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