Hualien City holds memorial service for those killed in earthquake

World Today

It was almost two years to the day that the southern city of Tainan remembered the victims of an earthquake. But the memorial service in eastern Taiwan was not for those victims. It was a ceremony to honor those killed in an earthquake just last week in the city of Hualien.

CGTN’s Rian Maelzer reports.

Next of kin of victims from the Chinese mainland came to the ceremony. They were assisted by people assigned to them by a Taiwan agency.

Hundreds of people came to pay their respects. However, relatives of two victims from the mainland still have to wait to lay their loved ones to rest.

“What is very regrettable at this time is that there are the bodies of two elderly people that have not been removed, and are still trapped in the rubble,” Yu Fong-ing from the Taiwan Affairs Office for the Beijing Municipal Committee of CPC explained.

Engineers have said that retrieving the last two bodies risks bringing down the entire building. They plan to demolish the building from the top down, in the hopes of recovering the remains.

“I hope that counties and cities will learn from this, to better prepare for future disasters so that we can minimize death tolls. I hope that our current pain will make us stronger in future,” Head of Haulien County’s Fu Kun-Chi said.