ANNOUNCER: Bringing you the world for 20 years, this is CNN.</s>MIKE CHINOY, CNN HONG KONG BUREAU CHIEF: In mid-September of 1999, the phone rang at my home at 2:00 in the morning. It was the assignment desk in Atlanta. They told me that there were reports of a massive earthquake in Taiwan.</s>CHINOY: I'm talking to you from the town of Chungliao in central Taiwan, very near the epicenter of the quake.</s>CHINOY: Barely 12 hours after that initial phone call, we were standing in a small town called Chungliao where every single building had been destroyed. Walking down a street looking into what had been third- and fourth-floor windows of residential blocks that had now collapsed on top of each other, there were well over 100 people trapped in those buildings. We watched as the locals desperately struggled to rescue people. We were constrained by the fact that telephone links were out, communication was extremely difficult. We hooked up with a live satellite truck belonging to one of the Taiwan TV networks. And through them, we were able to file story and to do a live shot where I was able to stand against the backdrop of this devastated town and tell our viewers what had happened.
CNN 20: Earthquake in Taiwan, September 21, 1999