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Almost half a million homes without power

"We have been coordinating our own pumping teams ... to clear the basements of floodwaters as quickly as possible."

A Taipei City government official

Almost half a million homes in northern and central Taiwan were still without power yesterday, as work on pumping out flooded basements that house electrical switching equipment progressed slowly, according to officials.

There simply aren't enough pumps to clear out the water from the estimated 4,131 or more flooded basements in the Greater Taipei area, executives at the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) said.

Basements in designated buildings house switching equipment that distribute electricity from Taipower's grid to other buildings nearby.

The time it takes to fully clear a basement of floodwater can be from 10 and 20 hours, said a Taipower official.

"We have been coordinating our own pumping teams along with private contractors to clear basements of floodwater as quickly as possible," said a city government official, who added that the government had been covering some of the costs of the operation.

The official said the city government was placing emphasis on first clearing the basements of essential public services like hospitals and administration centers.

Outages are extensive in Keelung and the Hsinyi, Sungshan, Ta-an, Nankang, Neihu, Tachih, and Mucha areas of Taipei, according to Taipower.

Company executives said that as of 9pm yesterday, 440,000 homes in the north remained without power and around 3,000 basements were either still underwater or already pumped out and awaiting Taipower repair crews to reconnect the buildings to the power grid.

In attempting to keep at least some power flowing to the larger office buildings around Taipei, building administrators have been hiring portable diesel generators -- some of them the size of cars -- which sit curbside.

Pacific Sogo Department Store on Chunghsiao East Road in Taipei, which saw flood waters inundate three of its basement levels, had three generators supplying power to the building and pumping equipment.

The flooding problem in Taipei was compounded by the failure of two major pumping stations in Yucheng and Dachih that are responsible for moving water out of the city's storm water drains and catchments and into Keelung River.

Taipei City public works officials said that the sheer volume of water overwhelmed the systems, forcing a shutdown of the Yucheng pumping station early Monday morning and the Dachih station later the same day.

The officials said they hoped flood water could be pumped out of the inundated pumping houses sometime today and the system would be "restored as soon as possible."
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