Maternity nurses at a Taiwanese hospital jumped into action to protect newborn babies during the country's magnitude 7.4 earthquake.
A CTV video, released April 4, shows two nurses at Ma Cherie Maternity Centre in Taipei, Taiwan holding tiny cots with newborns during the shaking, as a third nurse rushes in to help steady the beds. One of the nurses managed to lock the wheel of a cot in place with her foot.
According to NBC News, the April 3 morning earthquake, which occurred near the eastern city of Hualien, was the biggest the country has experienced in 25 years.
The earthquake killed at least 10 people and injured 1,099, reported NBC News; 705 people are trapped under rubble and 15 are missing.
“Of course we were scared, very scared, but I think this is the natural instinct of a maternity staff," Chen Ting-Chin, the supervisor of Ma Cherie Maternity Centre told Reuters. "The safety of the babies is of utmost importance.”
On X, the nurses were called "brave" and the footage "beautiful."
One family who lives in Hualien County told Reuters their home is too dangerous to stay in.
“I saw how this spot was damaged and felt really sad. I was thinking how ... the memories seemed to be destroyed all of a sudden,” Linda Chen told Reuters of a wall with height chart markings for her now-teenage son.
Chen's son, Chen Le-chi, told Reuters of their home, “It feels like it’s about to fall after the next quake, and the walls are all cracked. Too outrageous, too serious.”
Daniel Aldrich, the director of the Resilience Studies Program at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, told NBC News that Taiwan has enhanced its emergency response systems since a 1999 earthquake that killed approximately 2,400 people.
Aldrich points to building code enforcement and education as areas in which Taiwan's government has been well prepared.
“Individual residents know what to do. Where’s the evacuation shelter?" Aldrich told NBC News. "What do I do? Where do I go?”