A powerful 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck on the east coast of Taiwan early Wednesday morning.
It was felt across the entire island, buildings collapsed in the city of Hualien and it created a tsunami that washed across the southern islands of Japan.
State media says it’s the strongest quake to hit the island in 25 years.
“It’s bad and I'm praying for the people,” said Joseph Chou.
He is NBC Bay Area’s Janelle Wang’s uncle who lives in the city of Taichung.
He said he got an alert on his phone about 10 seconds before he started to feel the ground shaking.
“Started to feel really, really big shake, first up and down and then starting left and right for maybe a minute, pretty big,” said Chou.
He has a friend who lives in Hualien and said she is still in shock.
“She described to me, she said everywhere on the street is debris, and at least two buildings were collapsed and the hospital emergency room is filled with people,” said Chou.
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“It looks like the fault actually ruptured through Hualien and so people are literally right on top of the earthquake,” said Dr. Lucy Jones.
The seismologist also explains why the city of Taipei – six hours away -- also felt strong shaking.
“That's probably because Taipei is sitting in a basin and has a big bowl of sediment similar to what happened to the Marina District in the Loma Prieta earthquake, amplified shaking from a distance because of bad soils,” said Jones.
A flight from Taipei arrived at SFO Tuesday night. Winnie Tsou and Andy Lee of Palo Alto found out about the earthquake when they landed.
“Oh my God, I hope everyone is OK,” said Tsou.
They immediately checked on their family and friends in Taipei.
"They are okay, but they are scared, terrified, very big one," said Lee.
When powerful earthquakes like this happen, many think about what this would do in California.
“It would depend on what fault its on, Loma Prieta as a 7 didn't do as much as it could have done if it had been closer to urban areas, 7.4 on the Hayward Fault is one of the disasters that San Francisco could be looking at,” said Jones.
The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center says they do not expect any impact to California, but this is definitely very scary for many people.
Chou said he has an emergency bag ready in case any other big earthquakes hit.
