The Wrath of Marakot

Source BBC News:

Taiwan has appealed for international technical assistance to help rescue more than 2,000 people stranded after Typhoon Morakot caused major mudslides. The Taiwanese authorities say they need giant cargo aircraft able to drop large earth diggers and other machinery into remote mountain areas to re-open roads. Correspondents say only Russia and the US are believed to have such aircraft. Relatives of those stranded and of the hundreds feared dead have urged the government to speed up rescue efforts. Many have been waiting for days at the rescue operation centre in Qishan for news of family members missing since the typhoon struck over the weekend.
Red Cross workers carry an injured man from a helicopter in Qishan, 12 August 2009

Hundreds of people feared buried by mudslides in the south of the country have been found alive. But Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou - who visited the area on Wednesday - said hundreds more were likely to have died. The number of confirmed dead stands at 108. The Taiwanese government is sending more than 4,000 extra soldiers to speed up rescue efforts, with thousands already working to reach areas cut off when roads and bridges were swept away. Speaking while inspecting the rescue operations, President Ma said: "We welcome all forms of aid, and we also need equipment, especially helicopters that can carry cranes." He assured anxious relatives waiting for news that no effort would be spared to find their loved ones.


The Taiwanese government wants to dig out mud and open roads so it can bring out villagers stranded for the past four days. Earth diggers are already digging from outside the villages, but authorities say if they can get them inside, the vast amount of mud dumped can be removed more quickly and roads can be reopened - easing the rescue efforts. So far rescues have been carried out only by helicopters, but that has been a slow process.

While typhoons are common in Taiwan at this time of the year, this one caught people by surprise, dumping about half the average annual amount of rainfall in many places, and about two-thirds in the worst affected places. The authorities also need 1,000 pre-fabricated houses for families left homeless, correspondents say, as well as supplies of disinfectant to help prevent disease spreading. Nearly 14,000 people have now been evacuated by air from the worst-affected areas. Military helicopters have been dropping provisions for others, but continuing rain has hampered their efforts.

It is now confirmed that all three crew aboard a rescue helicopter which crashed in bad weather on Tuesday were killed. The typhoon struck Taiwan at the weekend, causing the worst flooding in 50 years.

The BBC's Alastair Leithead, at the Qishan rescue base, says thousands of extra Taiwanese troops have been drafted in to help the rescue efforts. The military is now trying to push out into remote areas on foot as well as by helicopter to establish who is most in need of help, he says. According to news reports, a wooden sign saying "32 dead, SOS" was posted by a collapsed bridge at the only entrance to one village, Hsinfa, on Wednesday. Several survivors were pulled to safety using ropes thrown across the river.

The National Fire Agency said about 200 people were awaiting rescue from a hot spring resort in Liukuei, while the military said it had found another 700 survivors in the area and was starting to move them to safety, the AFP news agency reports. Villagers in some areas are at further risk as lakes created by floodwaters burst their banks, relief official Hsu Chin-biao told the Associated Press news agency.

Some 300 people in the township of Taoyuan had been told to run to higher ground about half an hour before floods crashed down when an embankment holding back a lake gave way, he said. Typhoon Morakot, which lashed Taiwan with at least two metres (80in) of rain over the weekend, has caused at least $225m (£135m) in agricultural damage and left tens of thousands of homes without power and water. The storm also hit mainland China, where about 1.4 million people were evacuated from coastal areas, eight people died in flooding and up to 10,000 homes were destroyed.

Here in Qishan, we are close to the village of Hsiaolin, where hundreds are feared to have perished in a mudslide. The mudslide occurred early in the morning while most people were at home. The village had an unusually high number of people there at the time because it was the morning after Taiwan's Father's Day. Chih Shi-li, a 62-year-old villager, said he and his family were lucky to escape with the shirt on their backs. "The mudslide came crashing down while we were still in bed. It was very scary. It was like an explosion," he told me.

"I told my family and called out to my neighbours, 'Run to as high an area as you can.' Our house was shaking and was about to topple over, we had no time to get anything. "I took only my wallet with my ID card in it. Our home got washed away later by the mud." Harrowing accounts like this are pouring out as helicopters ferry dozens of survivors from the village. Dozens of family members have gathered in Qishan to wait anxiously as helicopters fly in survivors. One woman said she had not been able to reach her son and mother-in-law by mobile. "I'm really worried," she told me. "Most of the people in the village were elderly and children."

Another woman, Liu Hsiu-chu, said there could be more people trapped inside the village because more people were there than usual. Homes collapse in raging floodwaters from Typhoon Morakot, in Kaohsiung County, southern Taiwan, on Tuesday
Leaning houses demonstrate the force of the floods "Usually young people go to work and not many people are in the village but it was Father's Day so there were more people," she said. Residents have complained that the authorities should have done more to prepare people for the typhoon, such as checking for the safety of structures built on slopes and evacuating people. "It's not like typhoons are a surprise. They happen every year at this time. They could have done more to prepare people and prevent so much destruction," said Lin Jin-hsiung, a resident in the biggest city near the village. The only thing worried relatives can do now, however, is wait.

Hundreds of people are feared to have died after a landslide triggered by Typhoon Morakot swept into a southern mountain village. Rescue workers have been trying to find survivors in Hsiaolin and surrounding villages but the military says more than 700 are trapped and possibly dead. The typhoon struck Taiwan at the weekend, dumping record amounts of rain and washing out roads and bridges. The storm also hit mainland China, where six people were reported killed. Two died when a landslide submerged a group of houses late on Monday. It was initially believed that the buildings were apartment blocks, with many families buried, but Chinese officials later confirmed that they were one-storey homes which had mostly been evacuated before the landslide.

Helicopters have been dropping rescuers into the village of Hsiaolin, in the mountains of southern Taiwan, and winching out residents, trapped for several days by landslides that have cut road access and buried many houses.
See map of storms in East Asia. About 150 people who survived Sunday's landslide by reaching higher ground have now been pulled out of the area to safety, and more survivors were rescued on Monday and Tuesday. But more than 700 people were trapped, possibly dead, in Hsiaolin and a neighbouring village of Namahsia, Maj Gen Hu Jui-chou told Reuters news agency.

"I was watching from my house upstairs," said one survivor, Lee Chin-long. "The whole mountain just fell off. When I saw that, I started to run. Almost every house was gone, except for a couple." A helicopter with three people on board involved in a mission to rescue residents of a different mountain village was reported to have crashed in bad weather. It was not known if there were any survivors. Typhoon Morakot dropped some two metres (80 inches) of rain on Taiwan this weekend, causing the worst flooding in five decades. Rivers have burst their banks, washing away buildings, roads and bridges, cutting power lines and flooding city streets as well as farmland. Losses to the farming industry are estimated at $152m (£92m). Taiwan's official death toll from Morakot stands at 62, with 57 officially missing.

All day they have been digging in Pengxi - scrabbling away to try to clear the road with a digger, huge lorries taking away the debris. But still they are only about half-way through the wall of mud which has blocked the street, and now night has fallen. Some of the residents here whose houses have been destroyed are very angry and frustrated. We have been told by local people that the two women who died had actually been moved to a place of safety when the typhoon hit, but they came back because they thought it was safe. After five days of continuous rain, the soil had been loosened and when the landslip happened it happened in seconds; the two women did not have a chance. About 1.4 million people were evacuated from coastal areas of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. Two people were killed in the town of Pengxi in Zhejiang when a landslide struck about seven houses late on Monday. Officials said six people were pulled alive from the rubble but two later died. Four other deaths were reported in Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. Overall, about 6,000 houses were destroyed and more than 380,000 hectares of farmland flooded, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs announced. The storm has caused as much as $1.3bn dollars in damage, the ministry said.