Quake terror recalled

Taiwan mom tells how husband, baby died in building collapse

NURSE Liu Yi-chen was breast-feeding her 10-day-old baby when her family’s home in Taiwan collapsed beneath them as the building was destroyed by a devastating earthquake that robbed her of her infant and husband.

And rescuers yesterday pulled out alive an eight-yearold girl and her aunt from the rubble of the same apartment block, more than 60 hours after it was toppled by the quake.

Officials in the southern city of Tainan warned that the death toll could exceed 100.

The official death toll rose to 38 yesterday, with more than 100 people still missing.

Liu, 38, was rescued from the rubble of the felled Wei-kuan apartment complex in Tainan soon after the quake.

Her two other young children remain missing, among more than 100 residents still buried in the rubble.

She tearfully told of her terror and loss as she recovered in hospital.

“I was lying in bed breastfeeding and felt the bed shaking. My husband said to me something must be wrong and then the floor caved in and we started to fall,” Liu, who suffered broken ribs and a fractured shoulder, leg and spine, said.

“When we fell he held us tight and I fell on his chest . . . My husband made some space for us. The baby fell nearby, I heard her cry but I couldn’t reach her.”

Liu said they plunged several storeys from the ninth floor of the 16-storey block and her legs were pinned down by bricks. “I was talking to my husband and told him we have to get out together. He replied ‘I love you wife. You stay well’ and I said ‘What are you talking about? We’ll stay well together’. Then the talking stopped,” Liu said.

“The baby cried for an hour and then there was no voice,” she said.

Liu called out to rescuers who found the family and drilled into the rubble to get them out.

She begged them to take out the baby girl – Kang Chiaoting – first, only discovering that night that she had died. Rescuers then pulled her husband’s body from the rubble.

The apartment complex was felled by a 6.4-magnitude earthquake early on Saturday, the only high-rise in the city to collapse. Questions are now being asked over how safe the building was after it emerged residents had complained about cracks in the walls.

The eight--year-old girl rescued yesterday, named as Lin Su-Chin, was conscious and had been taken to hospital, Taiwan television stations said. Her aunt, Chen Mei-jih, was rescued shortly afterwards.

The quake struck at the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, with almost all the dead found in Tainan’s toppled Wei-kuan Golden Dragon Building.

Rescue efforts are focused on the ruins of this building.

Rescuers continued to scramble over the twisted wreckage of the building late yesterday as numbed family members stood around, waiting for news of missing relatives.

Taiwan’s government said in a statement 36 of the 38 dead were from the Wei-kuan building, which was built in 1994.