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The death toll in Taiwan's earthquake on Wednesday has climbed to 10, with hundreds still stranded, and more than 700 people trapped.
One woman who's happy to have escaped that fate is a Belizean student. Jomarie Lanza got her personal account today:
Today we spoke with one of the Belizean students out in Taiwan based in Hualien, the epicenter of earthquakes in the country. Halle Villanueva, a computer Science major, told us that Earthquakes are nothing out of the ordinary for her since she's been in Taiwan for the past three years, but yesterday's quake was nothing she had ever seen or felt before.
Halle Villanueva, Belizean Student in Taiwan
"When the earthquake first happened I was riding my motorcycle. And when I noticed that my motorcycle kept turning and I couldn't control it I thought something was wrong with my tire. I need to go to the mechanic. So I'm in the middle of the road approaching a stoplight, and next thing I see is that everything is shaking, and the people beside me are also shaking and holding onto their scooters and motorcycles. And at first I didn't think it was very big. It's stronger than anything we recently had but I was also fighting for my life to get the motorcycle to stand up or else it would have fallen on top of me. So after that, I didn't know what to do because when the light turned green and everyone still stood there. I was like should I continue or should I pull to the side?"
"Earthquakes are a regular occurrence in Taiwan, especially in Hualien, which is nicknamed the city of earthquakes. so I thought ok I've been here three years. This is just the norm at this point. I didn't think it was the strongest earthquake that has happened in Taiwan since 25 years I just thought it was a regular earthquake."
At present most students are still on spring break in preparation for their midterms, but according to Villanueva there's no telling what will happen when classes do resume given the extensive damage that has occurred on the college campus.
Halle Villanueva, Belizean Student in Taiwan
"So driving back home there was another big after shock and I was kind of scared to continue to travel home because I live 30 mins outside of the city which is near my university and when I finally arrived home my boyfriend had texted me that oh a lot of things in the apartment are broken. The cat is missing and my friends are texting me that my school building is on fire one building is flooded and also I just came from the city near the building that had collapsed and is leaning and I was shaken up because I thought it was just a regular earthquake and no it wasn't it was something very deadly and it could have caused so much damage especially since the building that had caused on fire was a chemistry building, a chemistry and physics building and that had a lot of toxins inside a lot of chemicals and the fire had started maybe around 9 AM and it didn't finish until 10 PM the night so we were advised by everyone they canceled the classes for the day and they told us please don't go near the building because all the fumes they are very toxic and you should wear your mask and filtered masks at that."
