Moment Taiwan is hit by mega earthquake on live TV: Terrified reporter is thrown around as studio shakes during 7.4-magnitude tremor that rocked trains and even swimming pools and claimed nine lives

A shocking clip shows the moment a news broadcast in Taiwan was interrupted by a huge earthquake which killed at least nine people and injured more than 800 earlier today.

Footage captured by the newsroom cameras showed how lights swung violently from the ceiling while a newsreader was almost knocked over as the studio floor trembled beneath her feet.

The presenter, who remained incredibly composed, tried to continue narrating from the teleprompter but was interrupted as she fell back and had to brace herself on the screens behind.

The magnitude-7.4 quake struck just before 8:00 am local time (0000 GMT), with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) putting the epicentre 18 kilometres (11 miles) south of Taiwan’s Hualien City, at a depth of 34.8 kilometres. 

Three hikers were crushed to death by boulders loosened by the earthquake, officials said. Elsewhere, a truck driver died when his vehicle was hit by a landslide as it approached a tunnel in the area, with five others later confirmed dead by Taiwan’s national fire agency. 

Breathtaking images showed how the road approaching the tunnel was completely wiped out by the landslide, with boulders smashing the tarmac to bits and sending it crumbling into the valley below. 

Now large-scale rescue efforts are underway as workers rush to free dozens of people trapped under the rubble of their homes, with photos showing teams in protective clothing squeezing themselves into small gaps to pull out injured citizens. 

Some 882 people are reported to have been injured by the National Fire Service, with 127 believed trapped. 

Around 80 of those are stuck in motorway tunnels around Hualien – a mountain-ringed coastal city of around 100,000 people that has been cut off by the quake.

Officials said the quake was the strongest to shake the island in decades, and warned of more tremors in the days ahead. 

The quake and aftershocks also caused 24 landslides and damage to 35 roads, bridges and tunnels. 

Social media was awash with shared video and images from around the country of buildings swaying as the quake struck, while others partially collapsed and sprayed debris into the streets.

Traffic along the east coast was at a virtual standstill, with landslides and falling debris hitting tunnels and roads in the mountainous region. Those caused damage to vehicles. 

Strict building regulations and disaster awareness appear to have staved off a major catastrophe for the island, which is regularly hit by earthquakes as it lies near the junction of two tectonic plates.

But the death toll is likely to increase in the coming hours with hundreds of people injured and many missing.  

Officials said the quake was the strongest since a 7.6-magnitude struck in September 1999, killing around 2,400 people in the deadliest natural disaster in the island’s history.

Dramatic images were shown on local TV of multi-storey structures in Hualien and elsewhere tilting after it ended, while a warehouse in New Taipei City crumbled.

The mayor there said more than 50 survivors had been successfully plucked from the ruins of the structure. 

‘I wanted to run out, but I wasn’t dressed. That was so strong,’ said Kelvin Hwang, a guest at a hotel in the capital, Taipei, who sought shelter in the lift lobby on the ninth floor. 

‘Earthquakes are a common occurrence, and I’ve grown accustomed to them. But today was the first time I was scared to tears by an earthquake,’ said Taipei resident Hsien-hsuen Keng. 

‘I was awakened by the earthquake. I had never felt such intense shaking before.’

She said her fifth-floor apartment shook so hard that ‘apart from earthquake drills in elementary school, this was the first time I had experienced such a situation’.

Local TV channels showed bulldozers clearing rocks along roads to Hualien, a mountain-ringed coastal city of around 100,000 people that was cut off by landslides.

President Tsai Ing-wen called for local and central government agencies to coordinate with each other, and said that the national army would also be providing support.

In Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines, authorities initially issued a tsunami warning but by around 10 am (0200 GMT), the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the threat had ‘largely passed’.

In the capital, the metro briefly stopped running but resumed within an hour, while residents received warnings from their local borough chiefs to check for any gas leaks.

Taiwan is regularly hit by earthquakes as the island lies near the junction of two tectonic plates, while nearby Japan experiences around 1,500 jolts every year.

Across the Taiwan Strait, social media users in China’s eastern Fujian province, which borders Guangdong in the south, and elsewhere said they also felt strong tremors.

Residents of Hong Kong also reported feeling the earthquake.

China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as a renegade province, was ‘paying close attention’ to the quake and ‘willing to provide disaster relief assistance’, state news agency Xinhua said.

Fabrication at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – the world’s biggest chip maker – was briefly interrupted at some plants, a company official told AFP, while work at construction sites for new plants was halted for the day.

The vast majority of quakes around the area are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to the depth of the epicentre below the Earth’s surface and its location.

The severity of tsunamis – vast and potentially destructive series of waves that can move at hundreds of kilometres per hour – also depends on multiple factors.

Japan’s biggest earthquake on record was a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea jolt in March 2011 off Japan’s northeast coast, which triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.

The 2011 catastrophe also sent three reactors into meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing Japan’s worst post-war disaster and the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Japan saw a major quake on New Year’s Day this year, when a 7.5-magnitude tremor hit the Noto Peninsula and killed more than 230 people, many of them when older buildings collapsed.