The Directorate General of Highways (DGH) yesterday denied Yilan County Commissioner Lin Tsung-hsien’s (林聰賢) allegation that it relayed information concerning Suhua Highway rockslides and stranded travelers only to the central government and not to the Yilan County Government.
Acknowledging there may have been some mishandling of the process, the DGH said that it did not in any way intend to disrespect the local government.
The DGH attributed landslides that stranded hundreds of travelers on a major highway in eastern Taiwan on Thursday to the -suddenness of the heavy downpour.
DGH Secretary-General Mile Chen (陳茂南) also admitted that there is room for improvement when asked by the press why the authority didn’t close the Suhua Highway as the area was battered by torrential rain.
A recently installed geographic information system couldn’t have warned motorists in advance because it was unable to determine the extreme nature of the rainfall in time to issue an alert, he said.
“It usually takes us two to three hours to collect the data, but the heavy rain really came all of sudden,” Chen said, adding that the DGH’s rescue capacity has been overwhelmed by extreme weather when similar incidents have occurred in recent years.
According to the Central Weather Bureau (CWB), the hourly accumulated precipitation in Suao Township (蘇澳) skyrocketed to 181.5mm between 1pm and 2pm on Thursday, about the time when a series of landslides occurred along the highway between Suao and Dongao Township (東澳). The precipitation marked the nation’s third-highest record, the CWB said.
Chen said the DGH might consider setting up barricades along the highway in the future in the event of similar circumstances so they could close off sections of the road.
Given the length of the highway, which is 118km, Chen said the management of any mandatory closure would be highly challenging.
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