Meanwhile, residents of Shanmei Village (山美) remain trapped after the highway to Alishan was damaged by landslides.
Village representative An Li-hua (安麗花) said yesterday the village was short of drugs to treat flu and high blood pressure. It also needs fuel for its power generator. Some of the residents sent photographs via mobile phones to inform authorities of their situation.
Also in Chiayi, the military sent a rescue team to Taiho Village (太和) to search for villagers.
In Pingtung County, 350 people in five isolated villages were evacuated yesterday. The villages in Wutai Township had been cut off when all bridges and roads linking the mountainous area with the outside world were severely damaged.
Most of the villages were accessible only by narrow mountain roads that often cross or follow riverbeds. The roads and connecting bridges buckled under the pressure of floodwaters brought by Typhoon Morakot.
Meanwhile, the bodies of the three crewmembers of a UH-1H helicopter that crashed at 3:32pm on Tuesday in the Yila Valley in Wutai Township while on a rescue mission, were found yesterday morning, the National Airborne Services Corps (NASC) said.
Captain Chen Chung-hsien (陳崇賢) of the NASC confirmed the deceased were 42-year-old pilot Chang Shun-fa (張順發), 47-year-old copilot Wang Tsung-li (王宗立) and 43-year-old crew chief Huang Mei-chih (黃鎂智). He said the cause of the accident still had to be investigated.
Thirty Rukai Aborigines in the village performed a prayer in Rukai, led by a priest, Wang Chao-shien (王朝賢), as the rescue team retrieved the bodies and flew them to Neipu Township (內埔), Pingtung County.
Minister of the Interior Liao Liou-yi (廖了以) and Pingtung County Commissioner Tsao Chi-hung (曹啟鴻) were on hand to receive the bodies and extend their condolences to the officers' families.
Huang's father said the family had stayed up all night, and that Huang's mother had been praying to Buddha since their son went missing.
“But this is as good, it is his fate. I am proud of him, really. He died serving the public,” the father said.
Chang, Wang and Huang's families will receive up to NT$10 million (US$303,700) each in compensation, Chen said.
Seven UH-1H choppers have been deployed for the rescue and relief mission since Saturday, Chen said.
However, “all 20 of the military's UH-1H helicopters have been grounded since the accident. Instead, we are dispatching five AS-365, two B-234, and one S-76 chopper to carry out the rest of the missions,” he said.
As of 9pm, the Central Emergency Operation Center listed 103 people as confirmed dead, 61 missing and 45 injured. The death toll is expected to rise as hundreds of villagers in the south remain unaccounted for.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHELLEY SHAN AND SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
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