A week after Typhoon Toraji hit Taiwan, mournful Nantou County residents yesterday were still looking for loved ones buried by mudslides.
Meanwhile, severed transportation links and a lack of supplies were causing problems for those that remained in the hardest hit areas.
Most villages in the townships of Hsinyi (信義) and Shuili (水里) along the Chenyolan river (陳友蘭溪) were damaged by Typhoon Toraji. Seventeen people died and 84 are still missing, while more than 400 houses were left destroyed.
Access to some villages in the area remains possible only with four-wheel-drive vehicles.
In Shangan village (
Diao, her husband, son and mother in law are still missing in the wake of the mudslide, while the bodies of her two daughters, aged 7 and 13, have been found.
"I rushed back from the US on Friday, giving up taking care of my second daughter who was to give birth to a baby next Tuesday," Chiang said.
Diao Chin-show (刁青琇), Chiang's third daughter, explained that her mother lost her husband just a year before in the 921 earthquake in 1999. Moreover, as a result of shock and depression due to the earthquake, her younger sister, suffering from cancer, passed away three months after the earthquake.
The family house collapsed in the earthquake. They had just finished rebuilding it.
"Everyone in the neighborhood loved my 7-year-old niece and said she would become a beauty," Diao recalled in tears.
"She was so sweet. When my younger sister died after the earthquake, she, who then was only four, consoled the family and said she would take care of her grandmother," Diao said.
"How could I possibly not be grief-stricken when I have lost my loved ones like this?" said the 60-year-old grandmother.
"My son-in-law was a nice and honest man and his mother was so close to me. She said she was going to raise chickens and would kill one for a good meal for me when I returned from the United States," said Chiang, who never expected that tragedy would bring her rushing back to the country.
"I want nothing but my missing family," sobbed the old woman, who asked to join the search efforts.
"I earnestly hope the government will not cease searching for missing individuals," she said.
As if her personal grief was not enough, Chiang has other problems.
"I cannot withdraw a penny from my bank account because all the required documents were destroyed by the mudslide," she said. "I hope the government can provide a solution to this."
Travelling alongside the Chenyolan via a bumpy and muddy temporary road, it was obvious that many houses in Hsinyi's Fongchiu village (豐丘村) were simply torn apart. Roofs were scattered in the fields in the lower part of the village, which is now covered by mud and rocks. Most electricity poles in the neighborhood are either half buried or completely felled by the mudslides.
Although the village has only one person missing, Diban Dagiwunan, a Fongchiu resident, complained about the local government, calling it inefficient in providing adequate services for victims of the disaster. He and his wife had to risk not being able to go home as the latter must have dialysis in another township.
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