Typhoon Survivors Are Found as Search Continues in Taiwan

Reuters

A rescuer crossed a river by rope in the flooded village of Liugui, Taiwan, on Wednesday. More Photos >

By ANDREW JACOBS and MICHAEL WINES

Published: August 12, 2009

CHISHAN, Taiwan — As the rain tapered off and the sun briefly appeared, helicopters resumed their search on Wednesday morning for scores of people believed missing in landslides and flooding that hit these rugged mountains of southern Taiwan last weekend.

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The streets of Cangnan, in China's Zhejiang province, remained flooded on Tuesday. More Photos »

Army officials said 470 people had been airlifted out of the affected area, and another 500 were spotted by rescuers as they waited for help in fields and on mountaintops in three villages, including 200 from Hsiao-lin, an isolated farming community that was home to more than 1,000 residents.

Typhoon Morakot killed at least 85 people as it roared across the Pacific, with most of the dead in Taiwan, China and Japan, but Taiwanese officials feared the death toll would prove to be higher once rescue workers began digging through the mud-and-rock expanse that was once Hsiao-lin.

The storm washed out the only bridge linking the village to the rest of the island, forcing rescue officials to rely on helicopters to drop in supplies and ferry out survivors.

Heavy rain and the area's difficult terrain hampered rescue efforts. On Tuesday, a helicopter crashed into a ravine during a mission. According to the Agence France-Presse news agency, the police confirmed that three rescuers aboard were killed.

The mudslide, set off early Sunday by more than 80 inches of typhoon-spawned rain, buried more than 100 homes in Hsiao-lin, said Wang Ching-en, a spokesman for the government's Central Emergency Operations Center.

A dozen soldiers reached Hsiao-lin on Tuesday afternoon, but officials said the devastation made any estimates of the death toll speculative. There have been conflicting accounts of the number of those missing in the town, with residents claiming the number was as high as 600 and officials saying it was closer to 100.

The tensions were palpable at Chishan High School, where the rescued were being housed. Survivors begged officials to move more quickly, and a group of men tried to break through a cordon to be allowed back on helicopters to search for lost relatives. In the end, three men were allowed onboard.

As they waited for word of the missing, people described a scene of panic and confusion as the mud enveloped their homes. "We ran out of our house before the mudslide washed it away," said Chih Shi-li, 62. "There were 44 of us, including distant relatives. We climbed to a hill. For one day and one night we had no rice, no water, and our clothes were all wet. No one came to help us until a day later."

Across the Taiwan Strait, in Pengxi, a mountain-ringed town in coastal China, about 270 miles southwest of Shanghai, a landslide buried seven small apartment buildings on Monday evening, but most were vacant. Rescuers pulled from the debris of one building the bodies of two women as well as four survivors, one of them seriously injured. No one else was reported caught in the slide, said an official at the local government office who was reached by telephone and declined to give her name.

Typhoons have ravaged the region in recent days. In addition to Morakot, which also killed 21 in the Philippines, Typhoon Etau struck Japan's west coast on Monday, killing 13 people and leaving 10 others missing, news agencies reported.

In China's Zhejiang Province, a weakened Morakot had moved inland, north of Shanghai, by Tuesday, leaving behind a sea of mud and city streets turned into canals in Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces along China's east coast. About 6,000 homes were destroyed, the authorities said.

Andrew Jacobs reported from Chishan, Taiwan, and Michael Wines from Beijing. Cindy Sui contributed reporting from Chishan, Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing, and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/asia/13storm.html?fta=y