Heavy rains over the past week have overwhelmed southern and central Taiwan, with flooding, landslides, road closures, damage to property and the evacuations of thousands of people. Schools and offices were closed in some areas due to the deluge throughout the week. The heavy downpours brought by the southwest monsoon are a second blow to a region still recovering from last month’s Typhoon Danas. Strong winds and significant rain from the storm inflicted more than NT$2.6 billion (US$86.6 million) in agricultural losses, and damaged more than 23,000 roofs and a record high of nearly 2,500 utility poles, causing power outages.
As the typhoon hit amid last month’s tense mass recall campaigns, many Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers politicized the natural disaster to leverage support to vote against the recalls. The KMT last week posted a picture of Tainan Mayor Huang Wei-che (黃偉哲) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at a recall event in June, criticizing him for “enthusiastically supporting recalls,” while ignoring disaster relief. However, when the photograph was taken, the typhoon had not even formed. Similarly, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) of the KMT claimed at anti-recall events that DPP lawmakers were focused only on the recall campaigns. That was despite the president, premier and local government heads visiting typhoon-stricken areas; Chiayi Mayor Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠) of the KMT even thanked Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) of the DPP for promptly sending personnel to help Chiayi City in relief efforts. KMT Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) said that posting photos of Taiwan Power Co workers fixing utility poles after the typhoon was “emotionally blackmailing” voters, as KMT lawmakers had cut a subsidy to the utility.
The failure of the recalls on July 26 showed that the KMT’s messaging was effective, but one-sided talking points and misinformation harm public information literacy. The government must take that seriously, and come up with easily understandable ways of promptly communicating facts and policies to mitigate the spread of harmful misinformation, not only from opposition parties, but also from China.
While the KMT legislative caucus last week continued to baselessly criticize the government’s flood control efforts, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) posted on Facebook a chart explaining the severity of the short-duration heavy rain that battered southern Taiwan. It linked statistics of hourly rainfall to “general perceptions” to help people understand different rainfall levels. For example, it described less than 0.1mm of rainfall per hour as “like cool water mists sprayed at amusement parks in the summer.”
A few weather stations recorded rainfall exceeding 100mm per hour, including 122mm per hour in Pingtung County’s mountainous Sandimen Township (三地門). The CWA described rainfall of more that 80mm per hour as “giving a sense of pressure or suffocation as if the sky is collapsing; exceeding the capacity of most cities’ drainage systems; can easily cause flooding and landslides.” Such a level occurs only in extreme weather events, and some might only experience it once in their lives, it said.
The CWA’s effort to educate the public about scientific facts with simple and easy-to-understand language is a good example of neutral public messaging. Similar examples include illustrations from the Centers for Disease Control reminding people to wear protective gear while cleaning up after flooding, or Ministry of Environment explanations on the health risks from damaged asbestos roofing. Such messaging must be integrated across the government to rebuild public trust and resilience.
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