Hualien's Shoufeng Township hit by magnitude 5.9 earthquake

Taipei, April 22 (CNA) Central Hualien County continued to be rattled by successive earthquakes Monday night, peaking at a magnitude 5.9 quake that not only shook most of Taiwan but even the Penghu Islands off Taiwan's western coast.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The epicenter of the magnitude 5.9 temblor that occurred at 10:11 p.m. was in Shoufeng Township, 26.5 kilometers south-southeast of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 8.6 km, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA).

The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, was highest in Hualien and Nantou counties, where it measured a 4 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale.

A total of 42 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or higher hit the central Hualien County townships of Shoufeng, Fenglin and Fengbin from 5:08 p.m. to 10:44 p.m., with 11 of them exceeding a magnitude of 5.

During a press briefing earlier in the evening, Wu Chien-fu (吳健富), director of the CWA's Seismological Center, said the series of earthquakes were aftershocks of the magnitude 7.2 earthquake that rocked Taiwan on April 3 and left at least 17 people dead.

The high frequency of aftershocks resembled the hours and days immediately following the April 3 quake.

Wu said they are occurring in a "blank zone" where aftershocks had rarely been seen in the past three week, but believed that they were "not particularly abnormal" and that they represented the release of energy in a short period of time.