The nation’s emergency preparedness policies after a devastating quake in 1999 help to explain relatively small numbers of fatalities
For Nina Huang, it was the shaking that jolted her awake. “The first thing I did when I woke up was to hold the cupboard next to my daughter. I was afraid that it might fall down on her,” she recalled. Then her phone buzzed with a warning about a tsunami.
The biggest fear for Huang and her husband was that the bridge connecting their waterfront village of Yanliao to the city of Hualien would collapse, leaving them stranded.
