Typhoon Morakot unleashed its fury on southern Taiwan last month, causing Taiwan’s worst natural disaster in a decade and forcing the evacuation of 24,950 people, while leaving 571 dead, 106 missing and 33 injured. As of yesterday, more than 2,650 people were still living in 32 shelters.
During the immediate aftermath, TV screens were filled with seemingly endless footage of flood and mudslide victims crying for help or anxiously awaiting the return of loved ones.
But while most news coverage and the public focused on the plight of residents of disaster areas, a number of groups of volunteers turned their attention to the suffering of stray animals caused by the storm.
The Central Emergency Operation Center did not release any official data about the number of stray animal fatalities during the typhoon, but preliminary estimates by Animal Rescue Team Taiwan showed that at least 1,000 stray cats and dogs were left homeless as a result of the disaster, while more than 300 were drowned or buried alive by the landslides.
Shelters run by individuals in southern Taiwan — the majority of them dilapidated makeshift buildings — suffered the most seriously.
For example, more than 100 dogs caged in a shelter under the Kaoping Bridge drowned after floodwater in the area rose to around one story deep, while dogs and cats in a number of shelters in Kaohsiung County almost died of hypothermia, the rescue team said.
International Fund for Animal Welfare volunteer Dick Green traveled to southern Taiwan with several members of the charity in response to cries for help from rescue teams. He said upon arriving at the disaster areas late last month that more dogs could die if the shelters did not receive relief supplies in time.
To coordinate donations of dog and cat food, cash and medical supplies and to maximize relief resources, the rescue team launched an online platform to help the strays, which volunteers described as “often ignored by the media and rescuers.”
The platform received up to 500,000 visits while more than NT$1 million (US$30,000) in donations poured in from around the nation within just a few days.
Ni Ching-tai (倪京台), convener of the platform, said the budget needed for reconstruction of all of the shelters in southern Taiwan could amount to several million NT dollars.
Meanwhile, volunteers at the Taiwan Life Caring and Animal Rescue Organization brought bags of food and bottles of disinfectant donated by Netizens to private stray shelters when they drove from northern Taiwan to the south last week.
This was their second visit to the disaster area since the typhoon struck.
Joined by the organization’s veterinarian, the volunteers quickly began cleaning up the dirt and mud left over by the floods as they arrived at the individual shelters.
One volunteer surnamed Hsu described the scene as “the most horrible scene in Taiwan’s animal protection history.”
The flooding not only took the lives of hundreds of strays in the shelters of southern Taiwan, it also highlighted the disadvantages of the shelters.
Many of the shelters were managed single-handedly by individual animal lovers in open spaces in suburbs and housed hundreds of strays. The animals were either caged, chained or allowed to roam free.
The shelters had had difficulty raising donations for food before the typhoon, Ni said, adding that the flooding only put the shelters in a much more unfavorable condition.
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