Taiwan Says 500 Are Feared Dead in Typhoon Mudslides (Update3)

By Tim Culpan
Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Taiwan said as many as 500 people may have been killed by landslides in the country’s south after Typhoon Morakot unleashed the worst floods in 50 years.
Morakot, a storm more than 1,600 kilometers (994 miles) wide according to satellite images, destroyed as many as 150 houses in the village of Shiao Lin, Taiwan’s National Fire Agency said.
“There’s about 500 people who were buried by the mud, but we don’t have the exact number,” Leng Chia-yu, a section chief with the agency, said by telephone today.
The typhoon dumped a record 3,063 millimeters (120 inches) of rain in Alishan after it started buffeting the island on Aug. 6. Floods wrecked at least 11 bridges in southern Chishan and 136 roads across the country were closed because of rock falls and high waters, according to the Transport Ministry.
As of 4 p.m. today, 50 people were confirmed dead in Taiwan with 35 hurt, the fire agency said in a statement posted on its Web site. The flooding is the worst in 50 years, said Wu Yueh- hsi, deputy director general of the Water Resources Agency.
China evacuated more than 1 million people before Morakot, the ninth typhoon of the Pacific cyclone season, reached its eastern coast on Aug. 9. The storm also brought heavy rains to South Korea and Japan.

Flooding and mudslides in Japan’s southwest two days ago killed 13 people. A magnitude 6.5 earthquake occurred early today near Japan’s coast, damaging buildings in the southwest and injuring more than 50 people.
Hotel Collapsed
The six-story King Shai Hotel collapsed into a river Aug. 9 in Taidong city in southeastern Taiwan, after flooding undermined its foundations. No one was hurt as the building was evacuated before it began to tilt.
“We should place special attention on the reconstruction and make sure we raise our standards so that such a matter will not happen again,” Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou said in a statement on his Web site yesterday.
Taiwan’s military today flew a 46-member special operations team to Shiao Lin village, which is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of the capital, Taipei, and Namashia village in southern Taiwan where they rescued 10 people, the Defense Ministry said. Army helicopters were deployed in search and rescue missions.
Some 216 people were airlifted in 50 helicopter missions today, the fire agency said in the statement. They rescued 497 people in 134 missions between Aug. 8 and Aug. 11, according to the statement.
People Trapped
About 200 people were trapped in Namashia with the military evacuating 10 people for medical treatment, the NFA said. Helicopter flights into Shiao Lin and Namashia were suspended later because of fog, it said.
The NFA has flown 21 helicopter missions into Shiao Lin and 13 into Namashia in the past two days, Leng said today.
A group of 300 people slept in cemeteries in Namahsia village where schools and libraries were destroyed, local television TVBS reported today. A young man carried his sick father on his back and rode a helicopter to safety, the news channel said.
The Apple Daily newspaper today reported that Tsai Chin- hui, 38, rescued about 100 people using a bamboo raft over the past two days in Pingtung county.
Military engineers helped rebuild bridges in Taidong city as President Ma called for supplies and construction machinery to be brought in by air, the fire agency said.
Compensation Offered
Taiwan’s government plans to give NT$1 million ($30,401) per family of those who died or are missing and promised 700 temporary jobs for people affected by the typhoon, the Cabinet said in a statement late yesterday.
Morakot caused agricultural losses in Taiwan of NT$7.26 billion including the destruction of 51,718 hectares of land, 3.9 million chickens and 82,630 pigs as of 3 p.m. today, the Council of Agriculture said in a statement on its Web site.
Taiwan’s economic growth in the current quarter may drop by 0.53 of a percentage point because of losses caused by Typhoon Morakot, Sinopac Financial Holding Co. said in a report.
Power was yet to be restored to 57,002 customers, 856,966 were without water, and phone lines to 76,535 customers remained disconnected, the fire agency said.
“Affected cities and counties should immediately contact the typhoon disaster relief center for assistance and to meet basic needs such as waste management, environmental protection, health and epidemic prevention,” Premier Liu Chao-shiuan said in a statement today.
China Deaths
In China, eight people have died and three others are missing, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Two people were killed when a building collapsed yesterday in the province of Zhejiang as a result of a “storm-induced” landslide, Xinhua said. The typhoon destroyed more than 6,000 houses, flooded 387,300 hectares of cropland and caused damages of up to 9 billion yuan ($1.3 billion), Xinhua reported.
Some 1.57 million people had been relocated and the most affected areas are the eastern China provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu, the news agency said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Culpan in Taipei at tculpan1@bloomberg.net.

Your Ad Here