The brave behavior of nurses selflessly protecting newborn infants inside a shaking hospital during Taiwan’s earthquake on Wednesday, April 3, has stirred hearts worldwide after footage was released on social media.
During the quake that has killed at least 12 people, nurses in a Taipei post-partum care center felt tremors and quickly pushed full cradles together, securing them in place with their bodies to protect the infants from injury.
CCTV cameras in the maternity ward of the center, located in the Shilin district, recorded the selfless display from the nurses, who stayed inside the building instead of rushing outside to safety.
“Every baby is a treasure to their parents,” head nurse Elaine said in a video released with the CCTV footage, after the earthquake. “When the earthquake struck, our first instinct was to make sure all the babies were safe. Those working in healthcare can relate.”
Elaine’s nurse coworker Aly said: “Even our nightshift colleagues rushed in to help without changing into their scrubs. Myself, my colleagues, and the babies are all fine now.”
As now, rescue teams continue searching for a number of missing residents, risen to 50 at time of writing, with more than 1,000 believed to have been injured in the disaster. Officials say some 127 are still trapped in collapsed tunnels and on mountainous roads along the rugged coastline.
Dozens of buildings have sustained severe damage and were deemed structurally unsafe following the tremors and aftershocks in Taiwan’s Hualien, the city closest to the epicenter of the magnitude 7.4 quake.
Officials said the earthquake struck at around 7:58 a.m. local time off the country’s east coast, triggering tsunami warnings in Taiwan and neighboring Japan and the Philippines. The epicenter was around 11 miles south of Hualien.
