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Clean-up starts as Krosa skirts China

A woman tries to cross a ruined stretch of Route 7 in Ilan County yesterday. Torrential rains brought by Typhoon Krosa caused several landslides and landslips, including this one that washed away the ground under a stretch of road, causing it to disintegrate. PHOTO: CNA

The nation was busy assessing and cleaning up the damage and losses inflicted by Typhoon Krosa yesterday, with transportation authorities striving to restore road access to several remote areas.

Figures released by the National Disasters and Prevention Commission at 5pm yesterday confirmed that five people were killed and 56 injured during the storm.

Two people were still listed as missing yesterday.

In Taipei, rescuers using bulldozers found the body of 60-year-old Chiu Chang-chi (邱正吉) at 2:41am after mudslides crushed his Yangmingshan (陽明山) home. His 30-year-old son Chiu Wen-hung (邱文宏) was also killed.

A 79-year-old Hsinchu man fell to his death from a roof, while a cook was buried alive by landslides at a hostel where he worked, it said.

Television images showed rescuers using shovels and bulldozers to rescue the cook, but rescuers said they feared he was dead.

In Ilan County, which bore the brunt of the powerful typhoon, a man was washed away by flash floods on Saturday. His body was recovered yesterday morning.

A 50-year-old woman died when her motorcycle hit a road sign, the commission said.

Meanwhile, the Central Weather Bureau said that Krosa had been downgraded from a typhoon into a tropical storm.

The bureau lifted the land warning for Krosa at 5:30pm.

By 8:30pm, Krosa's center had made landfall in China near the border of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. The storm was moving northeast at 14kph, packing sustained winds of 72kph and gusts of 101kph, according to the Central Weather Bureau.

Xinhua news agency claimed more than 1 million people were evacuated in the two provinces ahead of the storm. Authorities shut airports in the region and ordered schools closed for today Monday as a precaution.

Despite the weakening of the storm, the bureau warned of more downpours that could cause further flooding and landslides.

As of 6pm, roadcrews from the Directorate General of Highways were repairing 22 provincial highways in Ilan, Miaoli, Hualien, Taoyuan, Taitung, Kaohsiung, Chiayi, Taichung, Nantou, Taipei, Hsinchu and Yunlin counties.

Two county highways and four township roads also needed repairs.

The Taiwan Railway Administration was able to restore access to 14 railway sections. However, the Alishan Forest Rail, as well as the Pingsi (平溪), Neiwan (內灣) and Chichi (集集) lines, were closed.

The Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp resumed operations at 11am.

The Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport was filled with people whose flights were canceled on Saturday. Some faced a longer wait yesterday as more flights were canceled

The Civil Aeronautics Administration said that as of 6pm, 59 international flights and 214 domestic flights had been canceled, including charter flights between Taipei and Kaohsiung.

Shipping between Kinmen and Xiamen was unaffected yesterday, but connections to outlying islands were canceled.

A lack of flights and ships forced 511 tourists to stay in Penghu County for another day yesterday.

More than 500 households were still without water at press time, while 72,000 households were still without electricity and approximately 2,200 home phone lines were out of commission.

Close to 2,450 people in Taipei, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Nantou, Yunlin and Ilan counties had to evacuate their homes because of the storm. About 180 of them were placed in shelters.

Mudflow risk remains high, with more than 260 rivers listed at red alert and 660 at yellow alert.

Chiayi's Fenchihu (奮起湖) received the most rain from Krosa -- a total of 1,112mm, while Ilan's Taipingshan (太平山) had 1,072mm and Hsinchu's Niaotsuishan (鳥嘴山) had 1,013mm.

The strongest wind was reported in Suao (蘇澳) and Orchid Island (蘭嶼), which reached 16 on the Beaufort Scale.

Meanwhile, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday the city would look into the mudslide that killed Chiu Chang-chi to see if the neighboring area needed to be evacuated.

Hau said Chiu's family had told him that the slide might have been caused by a retaining wall put up by a man who built a nearby restaurant.

Chiu Chang-chi's older brother, Chiu Lai-huo (邱來火), who lives next door, said he suspected that the falling stones came from the pile of earth left by the construction project.

Chiu Chang-chi's wife Chiu Chang-tsao (邱張早) told a cable TV station that they had reported the problem to the city government in 2004.

Hau said the Chiu family had filed two complaints with the city government, but the complaints had nothing to do with the mudslide.

He said the government would investigate whether administrative negligence had contributed to the accident, but he said dereliction of duty charges against former mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) were wrong.

"First, I think former mayor Ma was ignorant of the complaints, and second, the landslide accident had nothing to do with him," Hau said.

Typhoon Krosa also devastated crops all over the country, knocking over everything from bananas in Nantou to betel nut trees in Hualien.

The Council of Agriculture said that as of 5pm yesterday, about NT$748 million (US$22.9 million) in damage had been tallied so far, but that figure was expected to rise.

The council said 13,283 hectares of farmland were damaged, with an average crop destruction rate of 20 percent, meaning that the equivalent of 2,630 hectares had been destroyed.

While banana and rice crops were the most heavily hit, persimmon, guava, papaya and grape farms were also damaged.

Although the council did not release any figures on leafy vegetables, vendors said yesterday prices for greens will rise.

At a discount fruit and vegetable store on Dingzhou Road in Taipei, cabbage rose to NT$49 per 600g.

The massive amount of rainfall have provided an unusual windfall for a lucky few.

Cable network TVBS showed footage of people "harvesting" fish at Taipei County's riverside park.

The Sindian river overflowed into the park's grounds and then receded, stranding the fish.

While some people interviewed doubted that the fish were safe to eat, others gathered as many as they could, arguing that the fish had probably come from the Feitsui Dam and were therefore safe to consume.

Additional reporting by AFP
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