It tore the surface for nearly a hundred kilometres up the spine of Taiwan and dropped one riverbed into a new seven-metre waterfall overnight.
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DownloadThe 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake struck on September 20, 1999, registering magnitude 7.7 (estimated magnitude). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 355× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 23.77°N, 120.98°E, at a depth of about 33 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 2,297 people were killed.