Extremely heavy rainfall brought by a frontal system pummeled northern Taiwan yesterday morning, severely disrupting operations at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and affecting more than 200 flights.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications said that the thunderstorms, which lasted for more than two hours, as well as overflow from the Pusin River (埔心溪), had caused flooding at the two traffic underpasses leading to the airport terminals.
Because of the flooding in the underpasses, motorists traveling to and from the airport were asked to use Provincial Highway No. 4, rather than the usual route, Freeway No. 2.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Rainwater also leaked through the ceiling of Terminal Two and caused flooding in its underground food court.
Air navigation facilities on Datunshan (大屯山), in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), which are used to guide air traffic into the airport, were also affected by the thunderstorms, forcing Air Navigation and Weather Services to activate a backup system in order to continue with air traffic control procedures.
By 1:30pm, 88 flights arriving at the airport and 131 departure flights had been affected by the weather, including two flights that were forced to land at airports in Kaohsiung and Taichung.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
After pumping out the floodwater, the airport reopened its main access routes at 6:13pm.
Passengers were crowded in the lobby of Terminal Two last night due to a backlog of delayed flights and an incomplete resumption of the power supply inside the terminal.
In response to the worst flooding since the airport opened in 1979, Premier Lin Chuan (林全) ordered the ministry to identify the causes of the flooding, adding that it must also identify those who should be held accountable.
Photo: CNA
“Lin was upset, because the airport is the gateway of the nation, and the flood caused a lot of trouble to the public,” Executive Yuan spokesman Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said. “The premier said that apparently there are serious problems with the construction [of the third terminal] at the airport, and asked the ministry to investigate — if there are human factors involved, then those people should be held responsible as well,” Tung said.
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said that the ministry would deal with the issue of overflow from the Pusin River with assistance from the Water Resources Agency and the Taoyuan City Government.
He said that Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) needs to reinforce its ability to handle flooding at the airport, including the use of water pumps and power generators.
Photo: CNA, screengrab from Facebook
“TIAC must learn to coordinate with the Taoyuan City Government and its police department to facilitate access to the airport when flooding occurs,” Wang said.
The Taoyuan City Government dismissed claims from TIAC that the overflow from the Pusin River had clogged the airport’s drainage system with trash and tree branches.
However, Wang said that now is not the time to be looking for someone to blame.
“The most important thing is to solve the problem,” he said.
Wang said that 153mm of rain had poured into Taoyuan within three hours yesterday morning.
The Central Weather Bureau said that rainfall in Taoyuan yesterday morning accounted for about 8 percent of the city’s average annual rainfall, which is about 1,930mm.
The bureau said that the heavy rain was caused by a convection system, which moved slowly and caused heavy rainfall between 9:30am and 11:30am.
Additional Reporting by Loa Ioksin
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS