A 7-year-old white Maltese dog was pulled out alive from a collapsed building in Tainan on Wednesday after being trapped since an earthquake hit Taiwan last weekend.
The dog, named “Le Le” or “Happy” in English, was sent at first to a temporary shelter where it appeared shocked and stressed.
However the sister and cousin of the owner soon came to rescue it.
They saw the dog being rescued on local television and realised it belonged to 50-year-old Lin Shiu-chu, who is in hospital after suffering injuries in the building collapse on Saturday.
So they made their way to he collapsed building and claimed the dog for their relative.
READ MORE: Survivors pulled out from building 2 days after Taiwan quake
Saturday’s quake killed at least 38 people in Tainan city in southern Taiwan, all but two of them in the collapse of a 17-story building. Even though the 6.4-magnitude quake was shallow, few buildings were reported to have been damaged, which experts said was because Taiwan’s building standards are high.
Huang Jia-rui, a structural engineer in Tainan, said Taiwan’s buildings aren’t as quake-proof as Japan’s, which is a leader in engineering quake-proof structures, but the island is catching up.
The extended Lunar New Year holiday officially started Monday, but celebrations were subdued and both President Ma Ying-jeou and President-elect Tsai Ing-wen canceled the traditional handing out of envelopes of cash in their hometowns.