With Typhoon Toraji dumping roughly 650mm of rain on Nantou County -- hardest hit during the 921 earthquake -- area residents yesterday not only had to contend with flooding, but also the threat of mudslides.
Residents of Chunken village (
At one stage, cars were seen floating in the torrents. Residents were forced to flee to the second floors of their buildings.
PHOTO: YOU WEN-YU, TAIPEI TIMES
"She clung to a pillar, but couldn't hold on," said an elderly man who had made it to a second floor sanctuary, as he wept about his wife who had tried to resist the waters and is now missing.
In the same village, TV crews from TVBS, ETTV, SET-N and Power TV, equipped with satellite news gathering trucks, were preparing to broadcast live reports from the area but were ultimately forced to abandon their trucks -- each worth more than NT$16 million -- as the rapids closed in on them.
In Nantou's Chushan township (竹山鄉), residents of the low-lying lands around the Mingchu bridge (名竹大橋) had to wade barefoot through a muddy field after the bridge collapsed under the deluge.
"There are three people who refuse to leave out of fear of losing all their property," a middle-aged resident said as he emerged from the muddy field and urged police to help persuade the trio to leave.
Some 20 households in neighboring Shangan village (
As the flood waters gradually subsided during the day, however, concerns about potential threats from mudslides were also raised in the Chiufen Erh Shan (九份二山) area of Nantou, where the water level in the area's dammed lakes had already exceeded danger levels.
"If some of the dammed lakes [in Nantou] overflow and trigger mudslides and it continues to pour, not only Nantou County but also neighboring Changhua County will be devastated," said Chou Kuang-yu (
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