The death toll from Tropical Storm Nari climbed to 74 yesterday after it caused the worst flooding in a century in northern Taiwan, the National Fire Administration said. It also left 208 injured and 22 missing nationwide.
The fire administration said that 41 people died in Taipei City and Taipei County while other deaths were reported in Keelung City, Chiayi County, Miaoli County and other areas of the country. Most of the victims were either washed away by floods or buried in mudslides which toppled their homes.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The storm carved a trail of destruction in the capital, inundating hundreds of homes and several thousand office buildings as well as flooding the multi-billion-dollar mass rapid transit system, forcing its closure.
The suspension of the MRT, except for the Mucha Line, which is constructed entirely above ground, affected some 600,000 commuters, as business, government and schools re-opened yesterday after a two-day suspension because of Nari.
Even though the city government provided back-up commuter buses, serious traffic jams blocked morning rush-hour traffic in Taipei yesterday. The situation was further aggravated by the failure of many traffic lights.
Taipei City Deputy Mayor Ou Chin-der (
"As the system is seriously flooded, it will be unable to resume full operations for half a year," he said.
Taipei Railway Station was underwater and basement parking lots in scores of buildings in the capital were also flooded.
About 4,130 buildings, 80 percent of them in Taipei City, were damaged after their basements and lower levels were flooded.
The defense ministry said that 15,920 soldiers had been deployed to help in rescue and clean-up operations. About 400,000 households suffered power outages, while water supplies to nearly 1 million homes were cut off and 410,000 telephone lines were left out of order, the fire administration said.
Heaps of waterlogged garbage were dumped on Taipei street corners and the stench of rotting food, thrown out of refrigerators left without power for days, filled the air.
A total of 186 schools were inundated by floodwaters, most of them in northern Taiwan, with some closed down for a third day yesterday.
Academia Sinica, the country's top state-owned research institute, also suffered unprecedented losses, with officials saying that some research may have been set back up to 10 years due to damage wrought by floods and blackouts.
The Central Weather Bureau said Nari had dumped up to 1,257 millimeters of rain on some northern areas in 51 hours from midnight Sunday, when it was categorized as a typhoon.
The huge volume of rainfall has not been matched in the past century, the bureau said.
Although Nari brought less rainfall to southern Taiwan, it brought about 775mm and 743mm of rainfall to Chiayi and Tainan Counties, respectively, as of yesterday afternoon. Both amounts are the highest recorded for the two counties in the last decade.
Nari's center was some 110km west of Kaohsiung at 5pm yesterday, packing gusts of up to 65kph and heading steadily west at a speed of 4kph.
Sea warnings for Nari remained in place, as forecasters said it still poses threats to the offshore island groups of Penghu and Kinmen. The storm was expected to completely leave the country by nightfall, the forecasters said.
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