2006 Hengchun earthquakes

2006 Hengchun earthquake

UTC time	??
Magnitude	7.2 Mw
Areas affected	Physical: Taiwan Communications: Various countries in East and Southeast Asia
Casualties	2 dead; 42 injured

The 2006 Hengchun earthquake occurred on December 26, 2006 at 12:25 UTC (20:25 local time), with an epicentre off the southwest coast of Taiwan, approximately 22.8 km west southwest of Hengchun, Pingtung County (with an exact epicentre 21.9 km deep in the Luzon Strait, also called the Bashi Channel, (21.89N, 120.56E), which connects the South China Sea with the Philippine Sea.

There are conflicting reports of the magnitude of the quake, with the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau marking it at 6.7, the United States Geological Survey estimating it at 7.1, and the Japan Meteorological Agency putting the magnitude at 7.2. Taiwan's Central News Agency is reporting that it is the strongest earthquake to hit Hengchun in one hundred years. Coincidentally, the earthquake occurred exactly two year after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that devastated the coastal communities across Southeast and South Asia.

Damage

News agencies aired reports in southern Taiwan of collapsed houses, building fires, hotel guests being trapped in elevators, and telephone outages due to severed lines. Two people were reported killed and 42 injured. The earthquake was felt all over Taiwan, including the capital city of Taipei, which is 450 kilometers north of Hengchun.

Power was knocked out to a reported 3,000 homes, but service was restored within a few hours. As of the following morning, cleanup was already underway.

Fifteen historical buildings, including a Grade 2 historical site, have been damaged in the historic center of Hengchun.

There were no reports of major damage in southern China or Hong Kong, although the two quakes could be felt there. The two earthquakes could be felt as far as one thousand kilometres away.

Aftershocks

Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau reported that a 6.4 magnitude aftershock struck near Kaohsiung about nine minutes later. A second aftershock was reported at 20:40 local time which was estimated at magnitude 5.2 and still a third about three hours later that measured 5.5 according to local officials.

The Central Weather Bureau website reports that five aftershocks occurred in the morning of December 27, including a 5.8 magnitude tremor at 01:35 local time and another of 5.9 magnitude at 10:30 local time near the Little Liuchiu island chain.

Tsunami Warning

Early reports indicated that the earthquake triggered a 3.3-foot tsunami, which was detected heading for the east coast of the Philippines, with Basco in its likely path. The warnings were, however, discontinued shortly before 1500 UTC.

This quake took place on the second anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which devastated Southeast and South Asia. That 2004 earthquake registered as a magnitude 9.1, and caused a tsunami with waves reaching as high as 33 feet.

Disruption in communications

The earthquake brought about the most catastrophic disruption in Internet services in Asia, affecting many Asian countries. Financial transactions, particularly in the foreign exchange market were seriously affected too. Aforementioned disruption was caused by damages to several submarine communication backbone.

China Telecom stated that several international submarine communications cables had been broken down, including:

• CUCN and SMW3, which was damaged at December 26 2006 20:25 UTC+8 approximately 9.7 km away from landing point in Fangshan, Pingtung County, Taiwan;
  
• APCN 2 S3, which was damaged at December 27 2006 02:00 UTC+8 approximately 2100 km away from landing point in Chongming, Shanghai, China;
  
• APCN 2 S7, which was damaged at December 27 2006 00:06 UTC+8 approximately 904 km away from landing point in Tanshui, Taipei County, Taiwan;
  
• FLAG Europe Asia, the segment between Hong Kong and Shanghai was broken at December 27 2006 04:56 UTC+8;
  
• FLAG North Asia Loop, the segment between Hong Kong and Pusan was broken at December 26 2006 20:43 UTC+8, severely damaging the communications within the Asia-Pacific region and with the United States and Europe.

Taiwan

Chunghwa Telecom stated that an undersea cables off the southern coast had been damaged, interrupting communications (including IDD telephone services and internet services) of Taiwan with China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States.

Hong Kong SAR

Starting from the dawn of December 27 2006, connection between foreign web sites/servers and HKSAR internet users kept failing. Wikipedia, search engines and portals like Google [1], Yahoo! [2], MSN [3] have been unavailable. Access to Chinese Wikipedia [4] was cut by the earthquake too, as the servers are located in South Korea.

Other areas

Korea Telecom, Telekom Malaysia , as well as Singapore's StarHub and SingTel have also reported disruption to some Internet services.

It is expected to take up to 3 weeks to repair the submarine cables.

See Also

• List of earthquakes
• 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
• Submarine communications cable

External links

• US Geological Survey earthquake report
• Taiwan Central Weather Bureau earthquake report
• Taiwan Central Weather Bureau The CWB maintains an up-to-date record of earthquakes and their aftershocks in Chinese.
• BBC NEWS article
• CNN article
• International Herald Tribune breaking news article
• Reuters article