Mr. Lai told reporters he expected the death toll to rise above 100.
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Images from the site showed metal cans and foam used inside the concrete framework of the building, raising questions over the safety of the construction.
Tempers flared as some relatives, losing patience, demanded to speak to rescue workers directly to get the latest information. The city mayor warned the death toll could exceed 100.
“They complained that the building wasn’t well constructed as there were cracks in the walls and tiles fell off after several quakes in recent years”, he told AFP.
Efforts continued through Monday, with an 8-year-old girl and a woman in her mid-20s both pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers also confirmed that the other survivor – a man called Li Tsung-tian – had been pulled out of the rubble.
Tainan mayor William Lai said he talked to Lee just after he was rescued. A rescue worker had handed over a photo album and homemade cards found next to her for her family to collect, said local official Wang Ding-yu.
He said: “I came back and forth all yesterday and now I’m here again”. More than 100 people were rescued from other parts of Tainan.
The deadly quake has cast a pall on Taiwan’s lunar new year celebrations, as NPR’s Elise Hu reports. It said that 171 people had been rescued from the building, 92 of whom were sent to hospitals. The company that constructed the building has since gone out of business, but Taiwan’s interior minister, Chen Wei-zen, said that the government would look into whether or not the construction was up to standards – and if not, whom should be held responsible.
Taiwan lies in a seismically active area and is therefore prone to earthquakes, which mostly cause little or no damage.
Taiwan’s official Central News Agency says nine buildings were destroyed in the quake, all of them in the historic city of Tainan. A magnitude 7.6 quake in central Taiwan in 1999 was a recent exception, killing more than 2,300 people.
The work could take up to an hour, the rescuers said.
President-elect Tsai Ing-wen, who won the election last month, said there needed to be a “general sorting out” for old buildings to make sure they were able to cope with disasters such as earthquakes.
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Rescuers on Sunday found signs of live within the remains of the high-rise residential building that collapsed in a powerful, shallow quake in southern Taiwan that killed over a dozen people and injured hundreds.
