Days of torrential rain have damaged roads in Yilan County and disrupted transportation for 200 households in Datong Township (大同).
The Directorate General of Highways said yesterday that it had managed to restore two-way traffic on one lane of Provincial Highway No. 7.
However, fearing that more landslides could occur if the rain continues, the agency has asked the contractor to closely monitor the situation.
Photo: Chang Chih-hsiung, Taipei Times
Damage was also reported on Provincial Highway No. 20, in the section between the 95K and 103K markers. The culverts of a makeshift bridge were severely damaged by rising water in the river and the highway agency said it would be able to restore access today.
Two shipwrecks were reported near Hsinchu and Penghu late on Monday night.
The Taichung Harbor Bureau said it received a report at 11:30pm that the Panama-registered freighter XinYi, a cement carrier sailing from China to Brunei, was sinking off the coast of Hsinchu, with 22 crew members aboard — 17 Burmese, four Indonesians and one Taiwanese.
As of press time, rescuers had located 19 of the crew, although one Burmese had already died. The search continues for three missing crew members.
Around the same time, the Panama-registered general cargo ship Dili Star sank off Kaohsiung County, according to the air force’s Chiayi Base and the Southern Coastal Patrol Office. The 12 crew members aboard abandoned the sinking ship and got into lifeboats. They were later rescued by helicopter and none were seriously injured, the air force said.
Due to strong winds and high waves, sea transport services between Taitung and Lanyu and Green Island were suspended both Monday and yesterday.
Central Weather Bureau meteorologists said that while Typhoon Megi would not batter Taiwan directly, the country would experience the combined effects of the storm’s outer rim and seasonal winds from the northeast.
Megi, which made landfall in the Philippines on Monday, was downgraded yesterday from a severe typhoon and was moving slowly over the South China Sea, the bureau said.
Forecasters have lowered the accumulated rainfall estimate for mountainous areas in Hualien from 1,200mm to 1,000mm because of the reduced severity of the storm, although the estimates for Yilan, Taipei and Keelung remain unchanged.
While the rain would ease slightly today, the bureau warned that heavy rains would occur again tomorrow, with super torrential rain forecast for the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country. The rainy weather is expected to continue until Sunday, the bureau said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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