As floods and mudslides hit Hualien County yesterday, residents of the east coast county said the damage was the worst they had ever seen.
Typhoon Toraji -- arriving with gales and heavy downpours late Sunday night -- caused landslides and floods throughout Hualien County, claiming at least 21 lives.
Hundreds of residents were left homeless as their houses were either flooded or buried in mudslides.
Roads, railways and bridges were also destroyed by the storm, and blackouts hit hundreds of thousands of families.
"I've never seen anything worse than this. Everything was gone in just seconds," said a resident of Kuangfu township (光復鄉), looking at the ruins left by the storm.
At least 18 Kuangfu residents died in mudslides, and 39 were still missing.
Two Kuangfu policemen -- Lin Teh-fu (林德夫) and Tsai Cheng-tsai (蔡振財) -- were swept away by the storm while driving in a patrol van. Lin, 41, was found dead in the van after rescue forces pulled the vehicle from a river. Tsai is still missing.
Lin had served in the police force for 12 years and Tsai for 19 years. Both were Aborigines from the A-mei tribe.
Lin's wife, who is pregnant, collapsed and cried as she learned of her husband's death, while Tsai's wife kept asking when her husband would return.
The Central Disaster Relief Center estimated that crop damage in Hualien County was NT$120 million, qualifying residents for government aid.
While the county was being pounded by the typhoon, Hualien County Commissioner Wang Ching-feng (王慶豐) was in Taipei yesterday attending the KMT's 16th national congress.
Wang said he had wanted to return on Sunday night but all flights had been canceled. "I kept in communication with local officials and was kept up to date about which areas were suffering from the worst calamities," he said.
Minister of the Interior Chang Po-ya (張博雅) said Wang's absence was hardly justifiable, as the county commissioner should have overseen disaster relief efforts in the county.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the