This year, like every year, families gathered in Tainan to celebrate the Lunar New Year. But this year, unlike other years, disaster struck the historic Taiwanese city.
A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake shook the ground beneath Taiwan just before dawn. The quake toppled a 17-storey building in Tainan, which crushed people and cars on its way down. At least 13 people were confirmed dead by nightfall Saturday, with more than 100 were missing.
Rescue workers remained hard at work Saturday night. Relatives waited in agony.
"Imagine something like this happening during Thanksgiving," NPR correspondent Elisa Hu told CNN. "That's the equivalent of what's happening here in Taiwan right now."
As is usually the case with tragedies, it is one thing to read about what happened. It is quite another to take in the images:
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