President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday morning inspected the Central Emergency Operation Center in Taipei before traveling to storm-ravaged Pingtung County, a day after Typhoon Meranti devastated southern Taiwan, leaving one person dead and 51 injured.
After being briefed about the aftermath of the storm, Tsai thanked military personnel and government workers at the center for evacuating residents to safety, assisting in cleanup operations and helping restore water and power supplies.
She warned the public not to let their guard down as another storm, Typhoon Malakas, could affect the nation in the coming days.
Photo: Yeh Yung-chien, Taipei Times
In Pingtung, Tsai met with residents of Jiadong Township (佳冬), which was flooded with waist-deep water, as military personnel delivered food and other supplies to residents stranded in three of the township’s villages.
Jiadong residents appealed for help restoring power and solving the flood problem, and Tsai told them that water pumps were being sent from Kaohsiung.
However, Pingtung County Commissioner Pan Meng-an (潘孟安), a Democratic Progressive Party member, said it might take some time to fully restore power in the county because the typhoon brought down more than 300 utility poles.
Photo: Yeh Yung-chien, Taipei Times
Premier Lin Chuan (林全) also traveled south to visit disaster areas in Kaohsiung, where hundreds of thousands of households were still without power or water and about 4,000 roadside trees were downed.
The storm also damaged about a dozen commercial and fishing boats in Kaohsiung Harbor, including a cargo ship under construction that was tossed 300m from where it was moored and slammed into four cranes.
The sole fatality reported from Meranti was a fisherman, surnamed Chen (陳), who fell overboard from one of four fishing boats that broke loose from their moorings in Kaohsiung’s Cianjhen Fishing Port (前鎮漁港) and drifted down the coast.
Photo: CNA
His body was recovered yesterday morning.
Schools and offices yesterday remained closed in Pingtung County, Kaohsiung, parts of Taitung County, Kinmen and Penghu.
The storm left about 1 million households in eastern and southern Taiwan, which bore the brunt of Meranti’s battering, without electricity and more than 720,000 households without water as it moved through the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan on Wednesday, government statistics showed.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
There were still about 400,000 households without power and more than 360,000 without water yesterday morning, according to the government statistics.
Taiwan Power Co (台電) said about 195,000 households in Pingtung lacked power, along with about 132,000 in Kaohsiung, 21,000 on Kinmen Island, 17,000 in Tainan, 5,600 in Taitung and 1,700 in Chiayi County.
Agricultural losses from Meranti have reached NT$593.41 million (US$18.72 million), according to the Council of Agriculture late last night, with Kaohsiung suffering the heaviest losses, estimated at NT$460.14 million, or more than half the total.
Pingtung came in second, with losses totaling NT$78.92 million, followed by Taitung with NT$20.65 million, Tainan with NT$10.99 and Kinmen with NT$10 million
The council said crop losses nationwide totaled NT$530.54 million, with the remaining losses coming from damaged facilities.
About 1,630 tonnes of vegetables were sold yesterday at the Taipei fruit and vegetable wholesale market, down by 24.2 percent from a day earlier, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
Most, if not all, retail markets were closed yesterday for the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.
The average wholesale vegetable price at the market was NT$39.2 per kilogram, an increase of 8.3 percent from Wednesday, the ministry said.
The Ministry of Education has raised its estimate of losses suffered by schools from Meranti to NT$115 million.
It said 280 institutions, including seven colleges, 54 senior high schools, 40 junior high schools, 169 elementary schools, seven kindergartens and a sports facility managed by the Kaohsiung Education Bureau reported damage of varying degrees.
Meanwhile, the Central Weather Bureau was expected to issue a sea warning for Typhoon Malakas late last night and a land warning at noon today.
On its current path, the storm is expected to affect northern and eastern parts of Taiwan tomorrow, the bureau said, although central Taiwan might also see heavy rain.
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