Flooding caused by Tropical Storm Mindulle in central and southern parts of the nation has caused further calamity, with more deaths and damage reported from disaster areas yesterday. However, the heavy rains would continue until tomorrow, the Central Weather Bureau said yesterday.
According to the central government's July 2 Flood Disaster Relief Center, at 5pm yesterday the death toll increased to 21, while 14 people remained missing. Three newly-reported deaths included two unidentified bodies that were retrieved in Hoping and Tungshih townships in Taichung County.
The Council of Agriculture yesterday said that the accumulated agricultural losses had exceeded NT$3.3 billion.
PHOTO: LIN KUO-HSIEN, TAIPEI TIMES
Weather forecasters yesterday warned that people living in mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan need to be alert for landslides, mud flows, flooding and lightning strikes today and tomorrow. Heavy rain might also affect the north of the country today.
In the last three days, cumulative rainfall at 40 monitoring stations in central and southern counties exceeded 1,000mm. At one station in Hsinan, Kaohsiung County, total rainfall for the last three days exceeded 2,000mm.
Taiwan's annual rainfall is about 2,500mm.
In stricken central counties, several major roads remained closed. Yesterday morning, Air Force helicopters began evacuating 1,000 people from mountainous Hoping township to military barracks or urban areas.
Victims had been sheltering at Poai Elementary School since Saturday when Mindulle struck. But rising riverwater inundated the school early yesterday morning, making it impossible for people to remain there.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday inspected affected townships in Nantou County, but ran into complaints from residents, who said the post-disaster distribution of materials was unsatisfactory.
"I've demanded that rescue and reconstruction efforts be performed immediately in all affected areas," Yu told residents.
After inspecting the county's seriously damaged Nuomi Bridge, which was built over a century ago, Yu promised to restore the historic monument as soon as possible.
In Shuili township, hundreds of hectares of grape vines were inundated with water after a 200m breach occurred in a protective embankment on the Chenyulan River.
Grape farmers complained to Yu about past government attempts to dredge the river. Crying loudly, one female farmer knelt before Yu and cried, "everything is gone."
At press time, thousands of residents in remote townships in Nantou, Chiayi and Taichung counties remained cut off.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS