As flooding overwhelmed towns and rural areas in the south, the death toll from four days of torrential rains rose to five, rescue officials said yesterday.
Officials at the Emergency Response Center counted three more victims late Monday, including a 15-year-old boy who was swept off his bicycle in Tainan County.
Other victims were a 73-year-old man buried by landslides in Pingtung County, and a 34-year-old Pingtung resident who died of electrocution after water swept through his home, center officials said.
On Sunday, a 65-year-old woman was killed when a landslide triggered by rains buried her house in Tainan County, and a 24-year-old motorist was swept away by floods in Kaohsiung County, the officials said.
Many residential areas in the south have been submerged in flood waters since Saturday. Several towns in Pingtung County have registered up to 100cm of rain over the past four days, the Central Weather Bureau said.
The heavy rains also wreaked havoc on traffic, with landslides cutting off roads near Alishan, officials said.
Television stations showed footage of rescue workers wading through swollen rivers, and people cleaning up their homes. Ferry services between southern Taiwan and the small island of Hsiao Liuchiu resumed after a three-day hiatus, allowing hundreds of tourists to return to China.
The Central Weather Bureau said torrential rains would continue to batter the south at least until the weekend, before expanding to central Taiwan.
The Ministry of National Defense sent 300 troops and seven armored personnel carriers to help with flood relief work in Pingtung County yesterday.
Some 200 officers and enlisted men assisted in cleaning up flooded streets in Hsinyuan village, one of the areas hit hardest by flash floods brought by heavy rains over the past few days.
The armored personnel carriers assisted in evacuating stranded residents to temporary shelters in addition to transporting relief goods, including bread, boxed lunches, mineral water and sleeping bags.
An additional 100 service members were mobilized to help in clearing away mud and rocks in the county's mountainous Machia village, which was struck by heavy mudslides caused by torrential rains.
As intermittent rains continue to batter the county, water levels in the Kaoping River remain unstable. Weather forecasters have urged residents in low-lying areas to remain on alert.
Meanwhile, agricultural losses have reached NT$296.6 million (US$9.44 million), official statistics showed yesterday.
Tainan City sustained the largest agricultural damage, with every farmer and fishery operator qualifying for government cash aid, Council of Agriculture officials said.
Meanwhile, farmers who grow melons, scallions and leafy vegetables in Kaohsiung County, as well as those who grow green beans in Tainan County are all qualified to apply for government relief, low-interest loans, they said.
According to the council's statistics,the country saw a total of NT$112.54 million in crop losses,while 2,791 hectares of fields have been flooded as a result of heavy rainfall,with 26 percent of the fields having their crops completely destroyed.
In terms of fishery production,there was NT$174.4 million in losses,mostly reported from fish ponds in Tainan City and Pingtung County, the tallies showed.
Torrential rains have also caused NT$450,000 worth of facility damage in the fishery sector, as well as NT$9.1 million in livestock losses, according to the council.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching