Sun, Oct 03, 1999 page17

• Damage Patrol: Victims

  In a remote wooded corner of Tungshih township that has come to be known euphemistically as the Linkuanchu, or the forest treatment center," a small group of local government workers has been assigned to deal with the incoming corpses.

  • By Chris Taylor / STAFF REPORTER
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  Hsu Chi-yi, a paunchy man in his late 30s, removes a surgical mask from his face and wipes at the corners of his eyes, as he tells how he and his team have done the paperwork and arranged for the cremation of around 210 dead bodies in the last week. "I don't have any experience at this kind of work," he says.

  A family of six stand close by. Their hands are folded in prayer in front of a table scattered with offerings of fruit and burning candles. The dirge-like hum of Buddhist chanting fills the night. They are mourning the death of a mother and two children, whose bodies are being driven away to a crematorium. An acrid whiff of death spikes the air.

  "That's because we've just processed three bodies," says Hsu. "The smell will be gone soon. The wind will blow it away."

  

  A traditional Chinese building at Taiwan Studio City that was once used on the sets of historical movies.

  PHOTO: CHRIS TAYLOR

  But although the mood is grim at the forest treatment center, for the most part, in the second week after the first big quake hit, central Taiwan is still coming to terms with the initial shock of the devastation even as it sets about cleaning up the mess and assessing the extent of the damage.

  General Lee Yu-wen, who is overseeing the military involvement in the relief and rebuilding efforts from a temporary command center at Puli Middle School, calls this the "second stage." He's a florid man with an athletic build and a demeanor that inspires instant confidence. He has 658 troops under him who are coordinating with local government and civil groups to bring help to the approximately 130,000 people who live in the Puli, Jenai and Hsinyi districts.

  "The first stage," he says, "was saving people. The second is rebuilding." But he's quick to point out that one aspect of that "rebuilding" is destroying dangerous buildings. You can see evidence of that throughout the region, as precariously leaning buildings are reduced to piles of bricks, mortar, beds, refrigerators and children's toys before an aftershock can bring them raining down on passersby.

  

  An imitation terracotta warrior leans precariously at Taiwan Studio City, a former Taichung tourist attraction that local workers think will probably never re-open.

  PHOTO: CHRIS TAYLOR, TAIPEI TIMES

  And if there's one thing central Taiwan has nowadays, along with homeless campers, it's collapsed and partially collapsed buildings, all perpetuating the atmosphere of danger and fear. The devastation is something that the official statistics and all the media coverage can't quite prepare you for. There's something deeply disturbing about giant blocks of apartments, where once people lived their lives, now deserted, shattered.

  The problem is, many of the hardest hit people of central Taiwan have come to the conclusion that the earthquakes will never stop -- making the rebuilding process a difficult, enormous task to apprehend. "The earthquake has become our good friend," quips one young Attayal aborigine woman at the Puli Elementary School, where she has been camped with her family for 10 days since the first quake struck.

  The effects will probably be long-lasting. It's easy to come to the conclusion as you to the homeless that central Taiwan is suffering from collective post-traumatic stress disorder.

  

  A giant Buddha statue is virtually the only thing still standing at the temple of Wanfosi in Wufeng.

  PHOTO: CHRIS TAYLOR, TAIPEI TIMES

  In a broad sweep up to 50 kilometers north and west from the once scenic tourist area of Sun Moon Lake people are camped out in tents, afraid even to return to homes that traveling teams of structural engineers and architects have declared safe. Many believe that another big one could strike at any time, bringing their worlds crashing down around them once again. Rumors sweep through the camps that a big quake will strike again in December. Or is that January? The continuing aftershocks that rumble through the area and continue to topple damaged buildings do nothing to quash such rumors.

  "Our future has become a big question mark," says a homeless Attayal aborigine named Kong Teh-lin at the Puli Elementary School. It's mid-afternoon and he has been drinking Taiwan Beer and Whisbee since the morning. "We won't go back until the earthquakes have stopped," he says.

  Despite widespread criticism of the slowness of the government response, in the second week since the disaster struck the relief effort is well under way. The distribution of aid may be chaotic, but one way or another it's reaching the people that need it.

  

  Although good for typhoons, heavy tile rooftops become an instant liability in earthquakes.

  PHOTO: CHRIS TAYLOR, TAIPEI TIMES

  At the Puli Elementary School, where a week earlier shell-shocked survivors camped out in fear of looters and aftershocks under tarpaulins and in whatever tents they could beg off friends and visiting civil relief groups, the army has erected more than 40 khaki tents. The camp now has its own team of 10 nurses and a doctor, and minibuses are available to ferry anyone who gets seriously sick to the Puli Christian Hospital. Classes for the children, a relief worker from Taipei says, will resume on Monday -- though they will have to be held outside as the Puli Elementary School itself is a shattered shell.

  But even as people's lives return to a pattern of sorts, and as people overcome their fears, as they eventually will, and begin to return to their homes, there will be reminders of the quake for a long time to come. In Wufeng, around 10 kilometers south of Taichung, at Taiwan Studio City, an amusement park that once showcased some of the sets on which Taiwan's historical movies were made, the period buildings now stand buckled and broken amid smashed glass and roofing tiles.

  "It's all pretty much finished," says a guard at the front gate. "They say that no building can be built a hundred meters either side of that over there." He points at a fissured buckle in the entry drive that stretches away in a line of ruined buildings in either direction.

  

  A fissure runs through a quiet residential street in the town of Wufeng, close to Taichung.

  PHOTO: CHRIS TAYLOR, TAIPEI TIMES

  Five minutes drive away at the Lin Family Mansion, once home to one of Taiwan's most powerful aristocratic families and originally slated to open as a tourist attraction next month after a NT$100 million restoration job, amateur photographer Han Kuang-fan stands amongst the rubble and ruins. A Taichung resident, he has been coming to the Lin Mansion to photograph it for years. Today he has left his camera at home.

  "It's funny," he says. "For years it was my dream to build a house like this in the country. A traditional style Chinese mansion -- cool in the summer, warm in the winter -- and all my friends used to laugh and say they were dangerous if an earthquake struck. Look at it. They were right."

  Close by at the Wanfo-si -- or the 10,000 Buddhas Temple -- the only Buddha in sight is the vast golden one that now sits crookedly atop a pile of crumbled pillars and ornamental stairs, his face strangely serene amidst the destruction.

  "My grandmother's ashes are interred here," says a young woman, and then she bows quickly in prayer.

  These days, prayers are thick in the air in central Taiwan, but they are not all people have. As you drive around the region, everywhere you see a hubbub of activity. In Tungshih, one of the hardest hit areas, a middle-aged woman who works with the World Vision Society, her face flushed with excitement, talks about her group's dangerous missions into the mountainous area of Hoping Hsiang, where aboriginal villages were cut off for more than a week. The day after I spoke to her the road would be cut off again and members of a World Vision expedition injured by landslides caused by an aftershock. But there's no doubting that as soon as the road opens they will be back, despite the danger.

  At the Tungsheng-kung Temple, the command center for the relief efforts in Tungshih, local officials, civil groups and the army work around the clock to provide food and shelter for the victims of the quake.

  "We have a meeting every day at 8am to update the number of wrecked houses," says Liu Ching-jung, an exhausted local official, "and then we coordinate with the local government and the military to supply tents to those who need them."

  "We have a situation now," says General Lee, "where order has been imposed and people are getting everything they need. Actually, in many cases, the problem now is that people have too much aid and they don't know what to do with it all."

  But for officials like Liu, the task of providing for earthquake victims has been bedeviled by poor coordination between local government and civic aid groups. He shrugs wearily. "Our system and processes are just not as efficient as in Japan. But then we've never had a situation like this before."
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